Gob's Journey
by Atiaran
Summary: A Fallout 3 fic. When Charon is critically wounded, the Lone Wanderer recruits Gob for a desperate journey to save his life. Female Vault Dweller, named Samantha.
1. Chapter 1

**Standard disclaimer:** Except for Doctor Elizabeth Corday, none of the characters, places, etc. in this story are mine, but are instead the property of Bethesda Game Studios. No copyright infringement is intended by their use in this story.

**Author's note: **I always liked Gob, and this story is my attempt to send him on the Hero's Journey. Normally Hero's Journey-type stories just aren't my thing—the format has been so overused these days that I often find it, if not _very_ carefully done, formulaic and predictable—but I wanted a chance to give Gob the adventure he had always been looking for, and this format just naturally seemed to lend itself to that. I perceive what I've written as a fairy tale done Fallout-style, complete with happy ending (hope I haven't given anything away!) I've taken some liberties with some elements of the Fallout 'verse to make this story work as I wanted it to (I'd mention details, but that would be spoiling), so I hope nothing I have done is too jarring to anyone.

Just a short note on Doctor Elizabeth Corday: for those who have been following my story series, I intended her to be the same doctor who treated both Samantha and Charon in NTRW, and yes, she is loosely inspired by the ER character of the same name. I had actually intended the scene between her and Gob to go completely differently, but somehow she popped in there and it just wouldn't work. Anyway, that's enough from me. Enjoy the story, and thanks as always to my wonderful beta, LadyKate, for being willing to beta this monster of a fic!

* * *

It was a dark and stormy night.

Rain no longer fell in the Capital Wasteland, but windstorms were not unknown, particularly during spring and fall; they could blow for hours, toppling dead trees and power lines, tearing rusty tin roofs right off of corrugated metal houses, and dumping quantities of brown, mildly radioactive dust over everything. No one liked to be out in such weather; when this one had started, Moriarty had locked up the tavern and gone to bed, secure in the knowledge that it would pass by morning. Gob had turned in too, and Nova had retired hours earlier with Jericho to the room where she conducted her business. _Nothing to do,_ Moriarty had thought as he crawled under his blankets, _but let it blow itself out._

It had been very much to his surprise when the pounding started a few hours later.

At first, Moriarty thought it was part of a dream; he rolled over, coming half-awake, and buried his head under the pillow, hoping it would go away. Instead, it grew louder and louder: _Wham! Wham! Wham!_ It sounded almost as if a Super-Mutant Behemoth was out there, bashing on the door so hard that the rickety structure shook, and Moriarty muttered a curse under his breath.

"_Moriarty! _ _Moriarty! Open up!"_

The note of desperation in the shouter's voice pulled him to full wakefulness; growling under his breath and promising a thousand curses on whoever it was down there, he rolled out of bed, made sure his shotgun was to hand, and pulled on his clothes. He threw open the door to his room, and looked over the railing. The pounding came again, even louder this time.

"What's going on, Colin?" Nova was standing in the door of her room, dressed in her sexy sleepwear and rubbing at her eyes. Behind her in the big double bed, Colin could see Jericho sprawled out asleep; the ex-Raider's rasping snores filled the air. _Drunk as a skunk and dead to the world,_ he thought cynically.

"Can't say, lassie." Colin checked the third doorway on the balcony; Gob was up too, hovering just inside the entrance to his tiny closet and looking nervous. Probably afraid that whatever trouble there might be down there would land on him, Colin thought, and his mouth twitched. _That damn zombie is worse than useless._ The pounding came again, and the entire building shook; dust sifted down from the ceiling.

"Nova, lassie, you still have that 10mm pistol I gave you for defense?" She nodded. "Go get it. Gob," he directed the ghoul, "take the baseball bat. Both of ye, follow me downstairs."

Nova was gone into her room almost before Colin finished speaking. A moment later, she appeared, calmly loading her weapon. _Quick study, that lass. Wish I had ten more like her._ Gob swallowed nervously. "Yessir, Mr. Moriarty, sir," he stammered, and ducked back into his room; he reappeared with his hands clenched white-knuckled on the bat. Colin chambered a shell as the pounding continued.

"You'll be remembering how to use that, lass?" he asked, indicating the pistol.

Nova gave him a cool glance. "Colin," she said, "a girl in my line of work has to know how to look after herself. Don't worry about me."

_Ice cold as well,_ he thought approvingly. "That's my girl. Come on," he said, and headed down the rickety metal stairs, his two employees following.

The pounding came again as he reached the floor, so hard that the door almost jumped out of its frame, and there was a despairing cry: _"Please, Moriarty, for the love of God, open up!"_

"That voice sounds familiar," he mused aloud. With his weapon in one hand, he directed Nova and Gob to take up covering positions. "Ready? Count of three….One…Two…_Three!_"

On _three,_ Moriarty wrenched open the door, raising his shotgun in the same moment to point it directly into the face of….

"_Samantha?"_

"Moriarty, thank God," the Vault kid almost sobbed. "I thought you were never going to answer." She started toward him and Moriarty stepped out of the way with alacrity; except for her helmet, the kid was dressed in the suit of green powered armor that he had seen her wearing whenever she left town, complete with arcs of electricity crackling around the armor's surface. He had no idea where she'd gotten it, nor did he want to know; but he _had_ heard that the only people around here with armor like that were Enclave soldiers. _At least that explains how she was able to pound the door so hard,_ he thought, and glanced again at the thin sheet of metal, half-expecting to see fist-shaped impressions punching right through it.

"What brings ye here this time o' night?"

The kid turned toward him. Under the better lighting of the saloon, he could see that she was deathly pale, almost gray-faced, with smudges under her eyes that were so dark they resembled bruising. "I need to hire Gob," she said desperately. "I need to hire him _now!_"

Colin glanced at the ghoul, frankly bewildered. _Of all the things I thought I'd hear her say…._ "Ye'll be wantin'…._Gob,_ then?" He raised a brow. "Honestly, I never figured ye for _that_ sort of thing." _Though maybe I should have, given how that Charon follows her around._ Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nova put her hands on her hips, looking rather insulted; Gob himself backed up a step, his eyes wide with shock. Colin suspected that if he could have, the ghoul would have been blushing furiously. "Nova's generally the one who handles that kind of thing around here, but if that's yer fancy and you've got the caps, who am I t' deny ye? Gob," he ordered with a shrug, "make the lady happy."

Something like panic leapt across the ghoul's decayed features, and he backed up another step, raising his hands. "M—Mister Moriarty, I—I—I don't—I—"

"You _do_ know how to make a lady happy, don't ye?" Colin pressed, at the urging of some inner devil. _I'd bet caps he doesn't,_ he thought. _Who'd want him?_

"_No!"_ Samantha cried. "Not for _me_—for _Charon!_"

The panic on Gob's face deepened into outright horror; Colin turned to stare at him openly. "You and the tall one, eh?" Colin frowned. "Is there somethin yer not tellin me, boyo?"

Gob opened and shut his mouth, but nothing came out beyond random syllables.

"_Not like that!_" Samantha practically screamed. She slammed her armor-clad fists down on the countertop, and Colin heard an ominous crack. _If it's broken, yer payin for that, lass,_ he thought. _"Listen!"_

Nova had been watching her carefully, and now she stepped forward. "Well, calm down and we will, honey," she soothed. "Take a couple deep breaths and start at the beginning, and we'll listen to everything."

Samantha did as she was told, drawing a long breath, then letting it out slowly. Colin fell silent and let Nova work; along with being the best hooker in all Megaton—_all right, the __**only**__ hooker in all Megaton_—Nova had a knack for getting information out of people that he had exploited more than once. Now as she coaxed the kid, Colin could _see_ Samantha growing less agitated almost by the moment. Under Nova's gentle persuasion, the kid eventually calmed enough to tell the story.

She and Charon had been on their way back from one of their frequent trips to Rivet City. _She has a boy there, _Colin remembered, _a boy she knew from when she was still on the inside. Dellia something, no, DeLoria._ Information like that always came in handy. They had been almost to the gates of Megaton when the two of them had been set upon by Deathclaws. "There've been more and more of them in the area recently," the kid explained, scrubbing at her wet eyes. "I should have been on the alert for them, I should have—"

"Well, just go on, honey," Nova encouraged her. "Tell it the best you can."

Samantha had managed to kill one, then had turned toward the other just in time to see it pick up her follower in its massive claws. "He had metal armor on but it just sliced through the armor like paper," she said, shuddering. "It picked him up and…and tore at him, and then it _threw_ him, maybe ten, twenty feet. I could—" She shivered again. "I could see the blood trailing. He landed against some rocks and there was a _crack._ Like sticks breaking. Doc Church says it was his ribs—all of them." She had managed to drive it off, but Charon had been severely injured, bleeding, more dead than alive. Samantha had taken him in her arms, and with the benefit of her powered armor, had managed to carry him back to Megaton.

"I went straight to the clinic," she said, "and Doc Church did everything he could, but he said the wounds were too bad, and all he could do was buy Charon some time. Maybe a day, two if he was lucky. He said—" She took a gulp of air. "He said there was only one chance."

"What was that?" Colin asked, frowning.

"Radiation." Samantha swallowed. "You know how it heals ghouls. Church said it was the only thing that could help him."

"That so?" Colin raised an eyebrow. "Well, then it's in the right place you are, lassie. Just take yer rotten friend right to the crater in center of town and leave him there for a day."

The Vault kid shook her head. "It's not enough. Doc Church said he'd need _tons_ of it. Like, more rads than most people take in an entire lifetime, an impossible amount—"

"Sounds like yer out o' luck then, doesn't it?" Colin said sardonically. "There's no place around here ye can get rads like that—"

"There is." Samantha's jaw set, in a manner at odds with her teary expression. "I know _exactly_ where to get that kind of radiation; the only problem is, I can't get in there without getting fried myself. And that's why I _need_ Gob," she said, flinging out a desperate hand toward the ghoul. "I can bring Charon as far as I can, and Gob can take him the rest of the way in. I came here right away to get him—You've _got_ to let me hire him, Moriarty," she begged. "I'll pay—" The kid broke off, and Moriarty nodded to himself; _not so desperate as to promise recklessly. At least, not yet,_ he thought with cynical amusement. "I've got caps. I can pay you as many caps as you want—just name your price."

Colin tilted his head, thinking it over. The kid watched him, her face hollow with despair, lit by the crackling arcs of electricity from her armor. Nova and Gob were silent; Nova's expression was unreadable, but Gob's eyes kept bouncing from him to the kid and back again, and the ghoul swallowed apprehensively. "So…let me get this straight," Moriarty said at length. "You want to hire Gob—"

"Yes," the kid said at once, nodding for emphasis.

"To go wi' ye and yer follower there—"

"Yes." She scrubbed at her face again.

"Off to some god-forsaken place—"

"Vault 87."

Moriarty thought for a moment. "That's not one I've heard of."

"It's not around here," she snapped. "Goddamn it, Colin—"

"Settle down, missy." Colin mentally added another hundred caps to his tally of what he would charge her, then continued, "So that Gob there can take yer follower into the heat t' be healed?"

"_Yes!_" Samantha practically sobbed. "Colin, will you—"

"Why, then, it's a business proposition you have for me," he exclaimed, and hooked an ankle around the nearest bar stool. Dragging it out from the bar, he slid onto it with a sigh of relief. "Have a seat, lassie. Gob!" he snapped at the ghoul; Gob jumped. "Get behind there. Pour me some whiskey, the good stuff, top shelf." He paused. "Ah, it's generous I'm feeling. Pour a shot for yerself too, boyo, seein' as how yer the cause of this conversation. And Nova, so she don't feel left out. Any for you, lass?" he asked, turning to face Samantha.

"What are you _doing?_" Samantha cried. "I don't have time for this—"

Moriarty fixed her with a look. "You've offered me a business proposition," he told her sternly. "I never hurry business. Bad luck."

"But Charon may be dying right now—"

"Then that should lend a pleasant sense of urgency to the proceedings, shouldn't it?" Gob set up the glasses on the bar, keeping his head down; Colin picked up the one in front of him and tossed the amber liquid back. "Drink up, me boy," he chided Gob.

"Mister Moriarty, I don't—"

"I said, drink, boyo. So yer drinkin." Moriarty fixed him with an eye. Reluctantly, Gob picked up one of the glasses and swallowed, spluttering and coughing a bit. Colin turned his attention back to Samantha, who looked like to be crawling out of her skin. "First things first, lass. What collateral d'ye offer?"

"Colla—_what?" _ Samantha demanded. "Colin, _please—_"

"_Collateral,_" he repeated. "In other words, what _assurance_ do I have that you'll be bringing him back? It'd be the easiest thing in the world for you to take Gobbie here and high-tail it the minute you get outside the walls of Megaton, so unless I have some kind o' security from ye that that won't happen, it's here he stays." It was no secret that Gob's hatred of working for him was matched only by his, Moriarty's utter indifference to it; there was no doubt in his mind that the ghoul would bolt at the first chance he got without some fairly strong restraints. _Probably get caught by Raiders and killed two miles down the road, as well. And then I'd be out my investment._ "Show me what ye've got, lass."

"What I—" Samantha cast around, utterly dumbfounded. The arclights from her armor crackled, lighting her face green and reflecting off trails of moisture down her cheeks. "I—I give you my word."

"Not good enough. If that's all you'll be offering, then this conversation goes no further. _What've you got?_" Colin demanded, leaning forward for emphasis.

"I've got—I—I don't know," the kid said desperately.

Colin winced inwardly. _Christ on a crutch, lass, you'd've done better to just hand me yer wallet._ _**Never**__ start the deal without knowing the four essentials: what you'll offer, what you'll ask, what you'll take and what you'll give._ For a moment, he almost regretted what he was about to do; then he saw Nova standing off to the side, arms folded, giving him her best disapproving expression. _Dearie, that look right there just cost yer friend her right arm. And the head-shake cost her the leg._

Patiently, as if leading a child by the hand, Colin said, "Generally speaking, the collateral has to be at least equal to, if not better than, the worth of what's being asked. I'll take no security off ye that's not."

"Colin, Charon is _severely wounded—_" The kid's voice cracked.

"Yes, and he'll be no less wounded for taking a few moments out to chat, so hold yer Brahmin while we do this up right." Colin eyed her. "The only thing I can think of that you own of equivalent worth to Gob there—put a drop i' the glass, boyo," he added, snapping his fingers, "is the deed to yer Megaton house." That was untrue; that fancy set of armor she was sporting was probably worth at least as much if not more. _But the armor's no good to me if I can't sell it. _"I'll be having that deed locked safe in me strongbox before the two of you leave town." Gob set the glass before him, still keeping his head down; Colin gulped it in a single swallow.

"Done," the kid said instantly, and Colin allowed himself a small smile. _Kiss it goodbye, girl, for you'll not be seeing it again. _"I want to leave within the hour—"

"Not so fast," he chided her. "That's just the _collateral;_ now we have to discuss the price."

"The _price?"_ Samantha's face turned red. "Moriarty, you—you—" She bit her words back, struggling.

"Do you want Gob or not?" he asked her bluntly. "If you do, you'll settle down and do things my way. Now then. How much are you offering?"

"_What?_"

"How much?" Colin raised a brow. "Yer taking Gob away from me at the height of caravan season, when I'm needing him more than ever to run the bar. How am I supposed to get by without his services for however long it takes ye to get there and back again—and what if he dies out there? Where am I going to get the wherewithal to buy another servant?" That eventuality would be covered by the collateral, but the kid didn't need to know that. "And then there's pain and suffering. How can I stand to be apart from me puir, puir Gobbie?" he asked, sighing theatrically, then clapped a hand on Gob's shoulder; Gob winced at the force of the blow and regarded Moriarty with alarm. "Why, the lad is practically like a son to me," he added, reaching out and hugging Gob hard enough to make him squirm. "All these things cost caps, my girl, and lots of them. What have you got?"

Samantha stared at him with wide and teary eyes, clearly trying to process what he had said through her tired and panicked brain. "I—I—Here," she said, visibly giving up. She tossed a burlap bag into the middle of the floor; it _clanked_ heavily as it landed. "That's eleven thousand caps. It's all I have. Colin, _please—_"

Colin raised a mental set of eyebrows; he had heard around town that the kid was loaded, but he had no idea how much. _No way she could have made that much scavving; some of those things they say about her and side jobs must be true._ "That'll do for a start, lass. What else?"

"What—else?" She rubbed at her eyes with one hand. "I don't know. I don't know. Armor. Weapons. Chems. Just tell me what you want, but _give me Gob,_ Colin!"

"What armor? What weapons? What chems? Come on, girl, be specific."

"I _don't keep a list!_" Samantha practically screamed. "God _damn_ you, Colin—" Her voice cracked again.

"Now then, there's no need for that sort of language, lass," Colin chided her primly. The kid's armor crackled again, washing her face green. He saw Gob looking from the kid to him, with fear and something that looked very like loathing in his decayed eyes; while Nova was watching him with her arms folded like a judge on hanging day. He shrugged mentally. There were few things he cared for less than the opinions of his employees. And suddenly he found himself wondering how far the kid would be willing to go.

"I'll tell you what I'll do for you, lass. Out of the goodness of my heart." He leaned back on his stool. "In addition to the caps you've offered, you hand over…" He stroked his chin, pretending to think. "Oh, say, everything you've got, and you can have Gob."

Samantha took a step back. She paled even further. "Ev…_everything?_" she asked in a faint voice.

_Time to go for the hard sell._ Moriarty leaned forward, holding her eyes. "Ye heard me, kiddo. _Everything._ Every stick and stone. All yer worldly possessions, as the Good Book says. That's what it'll cost to take Gob out of this town. I've heard ye've quite a bit of wealth stored in that rickety shack of yers, and that'll just about do to buy the life of yer follower. That's what we're really talking about here, after all."

"I—I—" the kid stammered. "I—Colin, I—"

"Yer follower isn't worth that much to ye? Shame. Ah well." He paused, and eyed her. _That was the bait; here comes the switch. _ "Of course, if ye were willin to be … _friendly_ … now, I could knock a bit off that."

"Friend…ly?" The kid repeated the word as if she had no idea what it meant.

"Aye. What I said." Colin leaned on the bar and gave her his best roguish smile. Liquid nitrogen would have been warmer than Nova's expression, while Gob looked horrified. Colin ignored both of them. Truth be told, the kid wasn't his type; too young, too skinny, and too haunted-looking, especially at the moment. He supposed she was all right, but Nova knocked her out of the park. But an intense curiosity possessed him to see how she would react.

"You…want…me…to be…_friendly._"

Samantha's voice dropped in temperature with each successive syllable, until it was a match for Nova's expression. Colin raised an eyebrow, keeping the pressure on.

"Nay, that's not what I said. I said I'd be willing to knock some off the price if you were. Those are your choices, lass: either you hand over everything you own, or we go up to my room and you show good ol' Moriarty a little affection. Yer decision. What's the life of yer friend worth to ye?"

The kid had gone totally still. What little color remained in her face fled; she was pale as death, paler even than Gob. The lightning of her armor crackled, wreathing around her. He had seen ghouls that looked healthier than she did. She stared at him for a long moment, her face frozen, then drew herself up. "I don't have time for this," she said quietly. She indicated the burlap bag. "There are eleven thousand caps in there. That is what I am prepared to pay for hiring Gob. Take it or leave it. That is my final offer. "

"No," Colin said, shaking his head, "it isn't."

"It isn't?"

"Nay, and I'll tell you why." He regarded her coolly. "Because you _have_ to have Gob." He gestured toward the ghoul, who stared at him, appalled. "No matter what the cost. If you _don't_ have him, then yer friend dies, and I know you well enough to know you'll not let that happen. I, on the other hand, _don't_ have to give Gob to you. And because of that—because ye have to buy but I don't have to sell—that means the entire game is played by my rules, and the dealing's not done until I _say_ it is. So these are your choices: Everything you own, or showin' Moriarty here a little tenderness. Your choice. How far are ye prepared to go?"

"This far."

Suddenly the kid was holding a plasma rifle in her hands, aimed directly at him. She had pulled it so fast he hadn't even seen her hands move. Her desperation had fallen away from her like a cloak; he could read nothing but resolve in her calm features, glimmering a demonic green in the arc lighting. A veil had come down behind her bright blue eyes; they were like holes into emptiness. Looking at them sent a chill down Colin's spine—either that, or the knowledge, dawning too late, of just how badly he had overplayed his hand. "Hey, now, lassie—"

"Don't call me 'lassie.'" Her voice was utterly without emotion. "As of right now, I'm no longer asking for Gob. I'm taking him. Gob," she said, very quiet, "get your things and come with me."

A sudden rage burst in Colin's chest, and he started to reach for his shotgun, only to stop as the kid raised her rifle. "Are ye out o' yer bloody _mind!?"_ he snarled instead. "Nova and Gob will _kill _ye—"

"I don't think they will. In fact, I don't think they _can._" The transformation in the kid was unbelievable; if Colin hadn't seen it himself, he wouldn't have recognized her. The desperate, crying Vault kid of a few moments ago was gone, and the face of a stone cold killer stared at him over the glowing barrel of the plasma rifle. "This is full Tesla armor I'm wearing. Nova and Gob are armed with a 10-mm pistol and a _baseball bat_ respectively. I think I can soak up enough hits to take you _all_ out if I have to. And I think they know it too." Samantha jerked her head toward Gob without ever taking her eyes off Moriarty. "Gob. _Move._"

Gob scurried for the stairs, looking both frightened and excited; Moriarty glared after him furiously. "You traitor zombie! Worst day's work I ever did was buyin yer rotting arse!" The ghoul made no reply. Moriarty could hear him shifting things around upstairs. Within moments he was back down again, carrying a small satchel.

"I'm ready," he said, his voice trembling a bit. He spared Moriarty not so much as a glance. The kid nodded.

"Let's go."

"Yer a fool, kiddo," Moriarty snarled. "You've made an enemy today. You know that, right? And I'll tell ye: Colin Moriarty is a bad enemy to have. I'll make sure no one in Megaton has anything to do with _either_ o' ye when you return—"

"No. You won't."

The kid raised the rifle and sighted along it. Moriarty went completely still, realizing again just how very badly he had underestimated the kid. She was no longer the naïve little Vaultie she had been when she first came here, no matter how much she might have looked like it; the Wastes had changed her, just as they changed everything, and he had not seen. It had been years—decades—since the last time he had this badly misjudged—

"What—what're ye—going to shoot me, lassie?" he tried to laugh, though his heart seemed to have turned to ice in his chest. "And all over a joke, and me not meaning a word of it? A sweet little thing like you? I can't believe that ye would—"

The kid pulled the trigger. The rifle discharged. Colin saw a flash of brilliant green, and then there was nothing.

[*]

Colin disintegrated, collapsing to the floor in a pile of glowing green goo. Nova and Gob both jumped; the kid did not, simply staring at the puddle for a moment. Then she turned back to the two of them. She did not lower her weapon.

"Gob," she said, again very quietly, "come with me. Now."

Gob skittered back a step. The excitement had left his face; now it was all fear. He looked almost sick. The kid was not pointing the plasma rifle _at _them, precisely, but she wasn't pointing it _away, _either. The ghoul swallowed.

"Nova?" he faltered. "Wh—what—"

Nova studied the kid. In her line of work, it was imperative to be able to read people well; she could tell that the kid was tired, frightened and desperate—desperate enough to kill—but not dangerous. Not if she were not crossed. She made no hostile move, simply waiting patiently for Gob to join her. And, truth be told, Nova couldn't blame her for her action in shooting Colin. After a moment, she said, "I think it's all right. Go with her, Gob. She needs your help."

"Thank you, Nova," the kid said, closing her eyes in relief. The bag of caps she had offered Moriarty still lay in the center of the floor; now the kid kicked it toward her. "Keep it. You can split it between the two of you when he gets back. Call it the hiring fee for Gob, or the cost to buy him out if you want. Or my contribution to the upkeep of the saloon." She gave a brief, exhausted laugh. "I've got to go."

She turned toward the door, gesturing Gob toward it with her plasma rifle. Nova called after her, "Simms is going to be here in the morning." _If not sooner._ "He'll want to know what happened to Colin."

The kid glanced back over her shoulder. Nova was struck once again by how utterly pale she looked. "Tell him the truth. Tell him everything. If he wants to kick me out of Megaton for it—well, then, so be it. Right now—" She ran one hand over her face. "I can't think about that right now. I have to think about Charon. Wish us luck."

"Good luck," Nova said quietly, and the kid nodded. She held the door open for a still-uneasy Gob, then went through it herself with a final wave. The door slammed, leaving Nova alone in the now-empty room.

A creak from the stairs jerked her attention back that way. She looked up to see Jericho weaving his way down, one hand pressed to his head and the other holding onto the rail to help him keep his balance. He squinted at her blearily. "Hey, baby, any more of that whiskey—_whoa, _what happened here?" he asked, his eyes widening as he saw the glowing puddle of goo.

"Oh, shut up." Nova stalked off, leaving a puzzled Jericho behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

Samantha set a brisk pace; Gob scurried to keep up with her as they picked their way among the jumbled layout of Megaton. Samantha was totally silent; the only sounds were the whining of her armor and the crackle of the arc lighting as she strode among the shadowed metal struts that supported the lurking black forms of houses. Gob darted a quick glance at her set and resolute expression, then dropped his eyes, clenching his hands on the strap of his satchel. The Samantha he knew was a nice, friendly girl who always treated him with kindness and respect, who brought him presents from the places she'd visited and told him stories of her adventures outside Megaton's walls. The grim-faced killer leading him onward was a total stranger to him.

_She just __**shot **__Moriarty—_ Gob shivered. He had hated Moriarty with the wretched hatred of the downtrodden, had daydreamed countless times how wonderful it would be if one day he woke up to find that Colin had died in his sleep of a heart attack, but the _way_ Samantha had done it… And how she had told him, so coolly, that he was coming with her— He swallowed and glanced at her again, uneasily.

"Am I…." Samantha glanced at him briefly. Gob drew a breath, summoning what courage he could. "Am I your…your prisoner?" he ventured as they climbed the stairs to her house.

"Only if you try to run away. Please don't try," Samantha responded. "It would make everything much more difficult." Together, they stepped off onto the platform where her house was. Samantha nodded at his satchel. "What's in the bag?"

"A, a, a change of clothes, some food, caps…" he fumbled.

"No weapons? Ammo? Armor?"

"No, I—Mister Moriarty doesn't let me have anything like that. I mean, he didn't," Gob corrected himself, stammering.

"Leave it behind, then. You don't need any of that stuff and we have to save weight." She pulled out her keys, unlocking the door to her house. "I'll give you a weapon, and I've got some leather armor that might fit you. Food, chems, caps, all of that stuff—let me worry about it. I can carry more than you in this rig, anyway." She pounded a fist against her armor-clad chest, then pulled the door open. "Come on."

The inside of the house was brightly lit and cheery, with a pre-war table and chairs in good condition, and even a not-too-badly worn carpet on the floor. It looked as if it were a pleasant, warm, and cozy place to live under normal circumstances, but the circumstances were hardly normal. The bright and colorful furniture had been pushed back to the walls, and the carpet was speckled with red. Lying in the center of the floor was Charon.

Gob gasped and stepped back, raising a hand to his mouth involuntarily. He had seen Charon around Underworld in the days before his ill-fated venture out into the wastes, but had always been too intimidated to try talking to the tall, taciturn ghoul; something about his silence, the flat expression in his filmy eyes, or the ease with which he handled his shotgun, had warned Gob off. _It wasn't just me either,_ he remembered; most of the ghouls in Underworld seemed rather uneasy around Charon. _All except Ahzrukhal._ Gob had been very surprised the first time Samantha showed up in Moriarty's place with Charon following her; it had definitely been the strangest sight he had ever seen, and he had often wondered how the friendly, open Samantha had come to take him on. He had never thought to see Charon like this.

The tall ghoul was lying full-length on a stretcher, strapped in; Dogmeat was curled up next to him, as if the Blue Heeler were trying to give Charon the only help he could, the comfort of his presence. The dog raised his head, and his tail thumped once; then he returned it to his paws with a whine. Charon had been stripped to his boxers, and those were caked with blood. Yards and yards of bloody bandages swathed his torso and ran up and down his arms; both legs were splinted and bandaged as well. His breathing was a torturous rasp. His features were so decayed already that it was difficult to tell if any further damage had been done, but Gob thought that one side of his face was swollen and possibly discolored. _She said the Deathclaw threw him,_ he remembered distantly. _Maybe that's the side he landed on._ He jerked his eyes away, unable to stop himself; though he had never been close to Charon, he never wanted to see anyone he knew looking like this.

"Doc Church says the bandages are basically holding his guts in," Samantha whispered to Gob, her voice trembling. "I wasn't kidding when I said the Deathclaw shredded him. I thought that he—" She broke off abruptly. He looked over at her, and saw that the distant, frightening stranger was gone from her face; now she looked young and very scared. She tried to force a smile. "Hey, Charon," she said, going to kneel by her follower. Dogmeat raised his head again, to watch her.

Charon's filmy eyes opened, and Gob saw that they were bright with pain and fever; they moved, and found Samantha. "Mistress."

She tried to smile again. Tears glistened in her eyes, but did not fall. "I just got Gob from Moriarty, so now we're going to take you to get better, okay?"

"As you command, Mistress." The words were a hoarse whisper.

"That's right, I _do_ command you to get better, so you have to do it, all right?" She touched a panel on her leg armor and a compartment opened. Samantha withdrew a hypodermic needle. "I've got a hypo of Med-X here. Do you want it?"

Charon swallowed. "Yes, Mistress." She bent to administer the hypo to his shoulder, and Charon closed his eyes as the drug ran into his veins. Dogmeat pressed his nose against the spot where the needle had been, whimpering. Samantha waited until Charon's breathing evened out, then tossed the hypo away and rose to her feet.

"Doc Church gave me a stash of Med-X specially formulated to work on ghouls and told me to keep him doped up as much as possible. He said the pain would be excruciating without it—"

Gob had no trouble believing that. "Regular Med-X will work too," he volunteered. "It just won't work as well—it won't last as long and you'll need more of it to get the same effect."

"That's good to know. Doc Church didn't give me very much—I was afraid of what to do if I ran out." Samantha bit her lip and swiped at her eyes with the back of one hand. "I know—Gob, I know I kind of shanghaied you into this, but—" She gave a watery smile. "Thanks for coming along anyway. I really, _really_ appreciate it."

"Well," Gob replied gruffly, "it wasn't like I had anything else important to do." With some hesitation, he reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. "It'll be okay, Samantha," he told her. "Ghouls are tough. I'm sure we can get him to this—this—Vault 87 in time. And radiation really does heal us. Just get him there, and I'll do the rest."

"If he survives that long." Samantha bit her lip again. "I don't even know if we _can_ get him there, and even if we do, m-maybe the d-damage is too bad to heal—" Her voice shook, and she broke off again, then drew a breath. She raised her chin. "But we have to try," she concluded quietly. The distant stranger slipped back into her eyes. "Let's get moving."

From the locker against the front wall, Samantha pulled out a bundle of leather armor and handed it to Gob. "Here. You can use my room on the second floor to change," she said, directing him up the stairs. While he struggled and squirmed to get into the unfamiliar apparel, he could hear her moving things around and opening and shutting lockers below. At last he came back down, walking a bit stiffly in the new outfit.

"How do I look?" he ventured.

Samantha turned to look at him. "You got it on right, but…armor doesn't really suit you." She smiled a bit sadly, then handed him a pistol in its holster. "Here's my .44 Magnum Blackhawk, and here's some ammo for it. You've shot a gun before, right?"

"A little." Gob had practiced shooting at radroaches in the Museum of Natural History before his abortive excursion into the Wastes. At the time, he'd fancied himself rather good at it. Later, he'd found out how wrong that estimation had been. Awkwardly, he belted the pistol on to his waist. Samantha nodded and passed him a combat knife.

"Vault 87 is about a day's walk west from here," she told him as he situated the knife in its sheath at his belt, "but I'm expecting it to take longer, given that we're carrying Charon with us. I'm estimating maybe a day and a half to get out there, and then maybe another day to get back." She bit her lip. "I _hope_ it doesn't take more than a day and a half to get out there," she amended, swallowing again. "We're not going to take time to hunt or to explore; we're just going to head straight there. I'm bringing rations for all of us for three days. Here's some water." She handed him a bag with several bottles of purified water. "Drink constantly. I cannot stress this enough," she said, holding his eyes. "It'll be hot out there and you will dehydrate very quickly. If you run out, ask me for more. Don't be afraid to run out; on the way back we can stop for more water, and it's better that you drink too much than too little."

Memories of his time in the Slaver caravan flickered in his mind; the heat, the dust, the weight of the explosive collar locked around his neck, and most of all the thirst. Gob nodded and swung the bag over his shoulder. "Are we taking Charon on the stretcher?"

"Yeah." Samantha glanced back at the downed ghoul. "I could just carry him in my arms or over my shoulder, but Doc Church says to try and keep him as flat as possible. That's another reason why it'll take longer to get there." She drew a breath. "So, we'd better start now. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready."

"Then let's go."

[*]

Color was seeping into the sky over Megaton as Samantha and Gob stepped out of the door. The two of them wound their way around Samantha's house to the path leading up to the gates, carrying the stretcher with the unconscious Charon between them. Samantha took point, gripping the handles between her hands and facing steadily ahead, while Gob brought up the rear with Dogmeat following. The town was still asleep; there was no one to see their small procession. They set Charon down briefly, so that Samantha could open the high gates, then resettled their load and continued.

Gob was silent as they passed beyond the sheltering walls of Megaton, taking everything in. The ground in front of him was a sloping, ashy plain that sank down to a worn trail of bare dirt below, surrounded with rocky outcroppings. As the gates swung closed behind them, a robotic, grating voice spoke to his left and he jumped, almost dropping the stretcher; he turned to see a Protectron bot standing there. _"Welcome to Megaton,"_ it ground out in a mechanical monotone. _"Enjoy your stay, pardner."_

"Actually we're leaving, Deputy Weld," Samantha corrected, resettling the stretcher in her hands.

"_Have a good trip. Come back soon._"

"I hope we do," she said quietly, then glanced over her shoulder at Gob. "Something wrong?" she asked him.

"No, it's just…this is the first time I've been outside Megaton in fifteen years," he answered. Moriarty hadn't even liked him leaving the saloon. He drew a breath, feeling a rising surge of mingled excitement and trepidation. Even the remorse he felt upon glancing down at Charon's injured form couldn't dim the sudden thrill.

Samantha nodded. "Come on," she said. Her hands tightened on the grips of the stretcher and she started down the long, sloping hill.

[*]

The two of them headed southeast at first, following a worn dirt trail that wound among massive bulwarks of rock. Samantha led the way, while Gob followed behind her with his hands folded around the handles of the stretcher. At a soft word from Samantha, Dogmeat trotted ahead of them, his ears pricked, sniffing the air alertly. Occasionally he would dart ahead, barking, then come running back to Samantha's side. "His nose and ears are keener than mine," Samantha explained to Gob. "If there's something out there, he'll see it before we do."

Not too far down the dirt trail from Megaton, near the remains of a shattered highway overpass, they came upon a trade caravan. "Lucky Harith," the trader introduced himself. He was followed by a female bodyguard, and a heavily laden pack Brahmin. Samantha carefully set Charon down in the shade of a nearby rock outcropping, then spoke with Harith for a bit. Gob seated himself beneath the same boulder as Charon while Samantha dealt with the trader, taking in his surroundings. Large jumbles of rock were piled on either side of the trail, looming over the travelers in strange and random shapes. Some way in the distance a high bluff reared up against the sky; it seemed perhaps a little more regular than the others, and there was what looked like a faded sign in front of it, but the distance was too great for Gob to make out any details. He wondered what it was.

_It's brighter than I remembered out here. Harsher, too._ The sun was not yet high in the sky, yet the brightness of the rays it cast still hurt Gob's eyes and made them water. Of course, the last time he'd been through here, he'd hardly been in a position to notice anything, he reflected; he'd been half-starved, faint with thirst and reeling with exhaustion, his body lacerated by cuts and blows from the Slavers that drove the caravan onwards. He'd been almost out of his mind when Moriarty bought him, barely conscious or coherent. With all that, it was no wonder he couldn't remember much.

At last, Samantha nodded one more time to Harith and Gob heard the clink of caps changing hands. As the caravan started off down the trail, Samantha came back to where he was resting. "Okay," she said. "The good news is, Harith says the road up ahead is largely clear of Deathclaws, yao guai, and things like that. The bad news is, the reason it's clear of threats is that the Enclave is in the process of moving in. They've got checkpoints and soldiers set up throughout the area west of here. So we're going to have to be careful." She went to the head of the stretcher. "You ready?"

"Yeah—I was just….remembering." Gob pushed up from his own seat and positioned himself at the rear of the stretcher. "What's that outcropping over there?" he asked. "The one with the sign. Is it anything important?"

"It's Vault 101." Gob glanced at her, startled. Samantha pressed her lips together. "We're not going that way," she said, and looked away.

"Oh," Gob said in a small voice. He had heard Samantha had been exiled from the Vault, but the pained expression on her face brought it home to him in a way it hadn't been before. He dropped his eyes and knelt to take the stretcher handles in his hands. On a three-count from Samantha, they hefted Charon's dead weight again and continued on.

[*]

The trail they were following swung in a circular arc around a large stony bluff and continued to thread its way through more piles of stone; in some places they slowed to nearly a crawl as they tried to negotiate the stretcher through. Before too long, though, the trail descended to the remains of what had once been a prewar highway. The pavement was cracked and broken, missing in places, clinging to the surface of the soil in irregular chunks, but the road itself was still largely there.

"Do we follow the road?" Gob asked.

"For now." Samantha glanced back over her shoulder at him and bit her lip. "It's a bit of a tossup. Staying on the road means much easier travel, especially carrying a stretcher—but at the same time it increases our chances of running into the Enclave. I'll be keeping an eye out—if I tell you to get off the road, do it immediately. Got it?" Gob nodded. Samantha glanced back at Charon, lying still on the stretcher. She drew a breath, then seemed to resettle herself. "Come on."

They followed the road roughly north for a bit, then took a turn-off onto a somewhat smaller subsidiary road. The sun beat down upon them. There was little wind, and what there was kicked up the dust fiercely, blowing it into their eyes. Gob blinked the grit from his sight and looked around him as they walked. This might have been the road by which the Slaver caravan had brought him to Megaton, he mused; he thought the land looked somewhat familiar. _That overpass, for example. _His gaze lighted upon the jagged remains of a highway overpass, dark against the pale sky. _Yes, that's right. We stopped in the shade and they handed out water…._

Dogmeat's growl caught his attention; Samantha halted briefly, studying the horizon and then altered course a bit. "Okay, we need to swing a little to the southeast," she told him over her shoulder.

"Why?"

"Raiders," she said succinctly. Gob swallowed a sudden chill. "That overpass up there—" she nodded to it "—is a favorite Raider hangout; they've got a camp up there and everything. Charon and I go through there and clean them out every so often, but they always come back eventually."

Even as she said that, Gob heard the distinct echoing_ boom!_ of a gunshot, and a few dozen yards off to the left, a stunted, blackened tree shuddered; one of its twisted branches gave a splintering crack and fell to the ground. Gob flinched—he couldn't help himself—but Samantha did not. "Looks like they're back again," was all she said. "Come on." She yanked the stretcher around to the right. "I'm not too worried—Raiders are terrible shots; all those chems spoil their aim—but still, it'll be better for us to get out of range."

"There are always so many Raiders…where do they come from, I wonder?" Gob panted, struggling to keep pace with Samantha while at the same time holding the stretcher level. Samantha lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

"Jericho could probably tell you better than me. Myself…I dunno. I think the Waste just _makes _Raiders. Being out in the Waste….the silence, the danger…..it's enough to turn _anyone_ into one of them." Samantha's voice was grim.

_But you've been out here for months_ _and __**you're**__ not one of them,_ Gob wanted to say. Something in the set of those armored shoulders ahead of him dissuaded him; he bit the words back and took a better grip on the stretcher handles. Charon stirred and muttered something incoherent, then lapsed back into silence again as they carried him onward.

[*]

The day grew hotter as the sun grew higher, and Gob felt himself begin to sweat. Samantha had been slightly off-target when she had warned him to be wary of dehydration; ghouls in general sweated less than smoothskins, because they had less epidermis overall, but as a result they tended to overheat more easily. By midmorning Gob was suffering. The leather armor he wore seemed to be too tight, constricting his chest, and its dark color absorbed the warmth of the sun. His legs were trembling and he desperately wanted to take a rest, but he hesitated to speak up. If he had made any such request of Moriarty, his only reply would have been a blow or a curse. _Of course, Samantha's not Colin,_ he reminded himself, _but…._ He held his tongue, lurching along in her wake and hoping silently that she would call for a halt soon.

Finally they crested a rise, and Samantha stopped. "Hang on for a minute," she told him. She carefully lowered her end of the stretcher to the ground, standing with her hand shading her eyes and peering out over the Wastes. Dogmeat looked out over the Wastes and barked, his tail wagging. Gob almost dropped his end of the stretcher, feeling like he was going to fall off his feet; he stumbled over to rest with his back against a barren, leafless tree, taking out a bottle of purified water from the bag she had given him and drinking thirstily. Samantha glanced over at him.

"Are you all right, Gob?" she asked.

"Just—I just need to rest for a bit, that's all," he replied faintly. Samantha frowned in concern.

"Gob, if you need to rest, you should say something," she gently reproved him. "I mean, I want to make good time and everything, but if you collapse from exhaustion then you're not going to do me much good anyway."

"I'm fine, really," he protested weakly. "Just give me a moment. Which way are we going next?"

Samantha crouched beside him and held out her left arm. Around her wrist was a green gauntlet-like device; she had had it as long as Gob had known her. Her Pip-Boy 3000, it was called: he knew it was a piece of Vault technology. She tilted her wrist slightly, and he saw that it had a small screen; she fiddled with a few controls, and the screen's image shifted to show a map of the area, outlined in glowing green lines. Despite his fatigue, Gob studied it with interest.

"We're here," she said, indicating a spot on the map marked with a glowing green arrowhead. "Vault 87 is _here._" She traced along a dotted line that led to an open arrowhead over an icon of a cog. "So you can see we've still got a way to go yet. We're going to be heading roughly northwest for the next few hours at least. I'd like to make it past the Jury Street Metro station," she said, tapping another icon on her map, "before midday. I don't think that'll be too difficult, as long as we—" A low growl from Dogmeat caught her attention, and she broke off, frowning. "Dogmeat, what is it?" She glanced down at the Blue Heeler. "Do you hear that?"

Gob had been aware of it for some time, a low droning sound at the edge of his hearing, but steadily growing louder and louder. He looked up as Samantha turned and began scanning the horizon. "What is it?" he asked, reaching for the weapon she had given him. What was left of the skin on his palms was slippery with sweat. Dogmeat's low, rolling growl rose to a sharp series of barks, and Samantha pointed.

"Enclave Vertibird," she said flatly. "Get down." She suited action to words by crouching in the grass next to a large boulder. Dogmeat crouched as well, falling silent, in response to a hand signal from Samantha. Gob followed her lead, huddling flat to the ground. The droning sound grew louder and louder, filling the world, making the earth shake underneath him. Downdrafts buffeted him, whipping up dust, and he raised his head enough to see the shadow of the twin-rotor craft pass on the ground perhaps a dozen yards from him. He pressed himself to the earth, feeling like a small rodent hiding from the shadow of a hawk. Then it was past, the chopping sound of the rotors receding into the distance. Slowly he started to push himself up.

"Samantha—?"

Her hand landed on his head, pressing him back down. "Not yet." He sneaked a glance at her and saw she was watching over the edge of the hill. She cursed quietly. "They're landing."

"Landing?" Gob's heart thudded in his chest. _They're so close_…. He had never seen actual Enclave soldiers before, and a strange urge to do so filled him.

"Yeah. Maybe a mile, two away. We have to move." Samantha began to rise to a half-crouch. "Are you rested enough to go on yet, Gob?"

"Yeah…" Gob slowly began to emulate her, getting to his feet as well. "Can—can I take a look?" he ventured.

"We don't have time." Samantha was already picking up Charon's stretcher. "We have to get out of here _now. _Trust me, I've had dealings with them before." She looked very grim. "If they catch us, I'll be shot on sight, and you—" Samantha drew a breath. "Gob, the Enclave is brutal toward ghouls," she said quietly. "You'll be _lucky_ if they just shoot you. If not--" She held his eyes. "I saw…things…when I was escaping through the labs at Raven Rock. Their scientists do very, very bad things to ghouls. And they make no distinction between sentients and ferals."

"Oh." Gob swallowed. He glanced toward the form on the stretcher. "But I thought—I thought Charon was their prisoner for a while, and they didn't—"

"That was a special case. And even_ that_ was bad enough." Samantha bit her lip. "Believe me when I say we need to get moving immediately. Let's go." She glanced at Dogmeat, who was still watching intently over the edge of the hill. "Dogmeat! Come!"

Gob moved without protest to take up his end of the stretcher. But as Samantha led them stealthily down from the hill, he couldn't help but glance back over his shoulder. The soldiers of the Enclave were made small by distance, but Gob could pick out the large form of the Vertibird and perhaps three or four smaller figures grouped in a perimeter around it, in dark armor. Even at his distance he could see flashes of red and green light—_laser and plasma fire,_ he knew. He wondered what they were shooting at, and couldn't repress a shiver.

_So that's the Enclave. I hope I never meet them…._


	3. Chapter 3

Despite their best efforts, it was early afternoon before they reached the Jury Street Metro Station, homing in on the red rocket ship that marked what had once been a gas station in the days before the war. The small cluster of cement and concrete brick buildings surrounding what was left of the old subway station stood out against the ruined backdrop of the Wasteland, forming an oasis of pre-war civilization; Gob counted a small grocery store, a hardware supply store, and a diner, as well as one or two other buildings, boarded up and so run-down that he could not determine their functions. The entrance to the subway was no more than a concrete platform with steps in the center leading down to a closed chainlink gate. He glanced around him as they carried Charon through the street; the other ghoul was mumbling again, though Gob couldn't make out any identifiable words. He had been restless for the past hour or so, shifting and squirming against the restraints that held him to the stretcher; Gob wondered if the Med-X were starting to wear off.

"Does anyone live here?" Gob ventured, running his eyes over the surroundings. "It looks abandoned…."

"It is," Samantha replied. "Most places in the Wastes are." She put her head back to look up at the sun, and he saw her shoulders tighten. Gob felt warmth spread across what little skin remained on his cheeks and he dropped his eyes; despite their best efforts they were already behind where Samantha had wanted them to be by this time. They had run into some awkward terrain that they had had trouble negotiating with the stretcher; and then a couple of times they had had to stop to deal with an attack by yao guai or radscorpions. Those things hadn't helped, but Gob knew that one of the biggest holdups was that he simply was not able to physically keep pace with Samantha. Tending bar at Moriarty's had not conditioned him for roaming the Wastes…_and Samantha's got that powered armor to help her,_ he thought. Already the strain of carrying Charon's stretcher was beginning to tell; his shoulders and back were starting to ache and his hands were growing sore from the pressure of the handles. He bit his lip.

"I'm sorry, Samantha," he apologized. "I know you wanted to be farther than this by now and I...."

Samantha was silent for a moment, then gave a small sigh. "It's okay. I'm just--worrying." She glanced back over her shoulder at Charon. "Let's go set him down in there for a moment," she said, jerking her head toward the rounded form of the diner. _Dot's, _the dead neon sign read.

Inside, the diner was a ruin, filled with dirt and trash. The windows had broken out, and rubble was piled in through them high enough to walk on. Papers, cans and empty bottles were scattered all over the floor, along with broken cups, plates and other rusty utensils. The smell was sickening, like a public toilet. Gob hesitated, and cast an uncertain glance at Samantha; but she forged ahead as if she noticed nothing out of the usual. He braced himself, and followed her in. Dogmeat trotted after them, then stopped at the door; he stared intently outward, his tail held up in the alert position. _He smells something,_ Gob thought, and shivered.

"Here," Samantha said, navigating the refuse-piled floor. "Let's lay him down back behind the counter where he's shielded a bit."

Gob gulped as they maneuvered the stretcher into place behind the counter. "Uh, S-Samantha—there's a body back here." _Or at least…the dismembered pieces of one,_ he thought uneasily.

"It's Prime," she responded absently. "Or Jiggs…I was never sure which one." She knelt, lowering her end of the stretcher to the floor.

"Oh." Gob silently digested that as he too lowered his end of the stretcher. It told him absolutely nothing. "Did you, uh…did you—"

"Did I kill him? No," she responded, her attention fixing on her Pip-Boy. "He was dead when I got here. I suspect Raiders got him, either that or he tried to doublecross his partner. It was from him that I got my Xuanlong Assault Rifle," she added, with a small smile.

"Oh." Gob squatted on his heels, somewhat queasily, reflecting that none of what she had said illuminated the situation in the slightest. "Should we leave—I mean, there are, uh, pieces—"

"Well, just push them out of the way," Samantha said with a shrug. "He's dead, he won't bother you." She bit her lip, her eyes still fixed on the green screen. "Gob, will you be okay if I leave you here for a few moments?"

"I—I guess?" he faltered. "Why?"

"I think we're being followed. In fact, I'm sure of it."

Gob's heart leapt into his throat. "The Enclave?" he asked hoarsely.

"No, I think it's just Raiders," she replied, glancing up at him reassuringly. "Ordinarily, I wouldn't even bother worrying about them until they decided to attack us—Raiders are more of a nuisance than anything else—but with Charon the way he is, I don't want to take any chances." She pushed herself to her feet, taking her helmet from where it had been hanging at her hip and raising it to her head. It clicked home, sealing with the rest of her armor, and a brief flash of green lightning arced around her. She took her plasma rifle from her back. As she stood there looking down at Gob, armored and alien, a chill passed through him. When she spoke, her voice crackled with electronic static. _"I'm going to go out and deal with them. Wait here until I get back. You still have the gun I gave you?"_ Wordlessly Gob took it out and showed it to her. _"Good. If anyone comes, shoot to kill. I'll be back in a bit. Dogmeat! Heel!"_

So saying, she stepped out the door and was gone, leaving Gob alone in the filthy, gore-encrusted diner. He settled on the floor next to Charon's unconscious form, setting his back to the wall and gazing in the direction Samantha had gone. One of his hands landed on something soft and squishy; he yanked it back with a jolt, realizing it had landed on a piece of the body. _Prime,_ he thought, gazing down at the piece; it was a leg, clad in the remains of a boot. _That's what Samantha called him. Or maybe Jiggs…._ Gob bit his lip. Beside him, Charon tossed in his restraints, muttering unintelligibly, then subsided again.

_So this is what having an adventure is like. _Gob stole a glance at the dismembered corpse of Prime, then looked away, working his shoulders to relieve the ache. He tried to remember if he had had anything like this in mind when he had first set out from Underworld so long ago, and couldn't do it. The pathways that might have led him back into his state of mind at that time were long since closed to him. Somehow he doubted it, though. _I really hadn't thought anything through very well,_ he recalled ruefully. He'd set out from Underworld with no goal, no destination except a vague desire to maybe get to Rivet City, no armor, only a .32 pistol for defense, and maybe a hundred caps to buy things with. _No wonder Carol begged me not to go. _His mouth twisted at the thought.

What he _should_ have done, he'd realized in the fifteen years since then, was ask Quinn to take him along on one of his expeditions, or at least spent some time walking the beat with Willow. Either one of them could have shown him the ropes, helped him find his feet…. _Was it any surprise that I got captured by Slavers almost immediately?_ Not at all, he reflected moodily; the only surprise was that he hadn't gotten killed.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't hear the sounds of the approach until they were right on top of him. The grating of a footstep outside finally made its way into his consciousness. He got to his knees, starting to call out…then stopped. High, sneering voices drifted in through the open doors.

"Think anyone's around, Tuner?"

"Gotta be, Slice. I was tellin you, I was watchin from the hill. I seen that armor chick come in here with those two fuckin zombies, one walkin behind her, the other on the stretcher. Then the armor chick leaves, but no zombies. They gotta still be in here." The one called Tuner gave a vicious laugh.

_Raiders. _Gob's heart froze within him. He was shaking, his mouth dry. Carefully, on wobbly hands and knees, he crept forward just enough to where he could peer around the edge of the counter. He saw shadows cross outside the diner door.

"That armor chick looked nice," came another voice, this one female. "I wish she was still in here. I'd love to _cut_ her up good. Wouldn't be so pretty then. You with me, Rose?"

"Yeah, Star," another female agreed. "Zombies're no fun. Half the time, everything's already fallen off them anyway, so there's nothin left to cut." She giggled nastily.

"Well, anyway, here's the diner. Let's go find them fuckin zombies. Have some _fun,_" Tuner sneered. The shadows moved again. The footsteps were coming closer.

Gob scooted back from the counter, planting his back against the wall and shivering in panic. His stomach was crawling; he felt as if he were going to be sick, right then and there. A trembling weakness spread along his limbs. His heart was racing in his chest; blackness crept in at the edges of his vision, and for a moment he felt as if he were going to pass out. _The gun—the gun Samantha gave me—_ He struggled to draw it from its holster. His hands were shaking so much he almost dropped it; he caught it at the last moment by pressing his palms together. His remaining skin was slick with sweat, his palms clammy. The shadows were closer now, and the vicious voices louder; over the counter, he could see the head of one Raider appear in the doorway briefly. _They're here…oh God, they're here….they'll find me…._

"Here."

At the rasping voice from his left, Gob nearly jumped a foot off the ground. Trembling like a live wire, he whipped around to see Charon.

The other ghoul was awake. His rotting features looked even more corpselike than usual; his cheeks were hollower, his eyes more sunken, but he was awake. He was fumbling with the quick-release buckle on the straps holding him to the stretcher; he tripped the catch, and then raised himself torturously on one elbow. Sweat gleamed on what remained of his skin, and the exposed muscles in his face and neck twitched in spasms. His voice was a hoarse whisper. "Give me the gun."

Gob stared at him. His wildly overstressed mind couldn't make sense of Charon's request at first. "I—I—"

"_Give it to me._" Those milky eyes gleamed, fever-bright, compelling. Gob slid the weapon over to him almost without thought. Charon picked it up and checked the load, his ruined face twitching. "Keep your hands off weapons," he rasped. "You're hopeless."

Gob swallowed. He tried to reply, but nothing came out. The Raiders were very near now; the one in the doorway laughed and called something back to the rest of them.

"How many?" Charon asked.

It took Gob a moment to realize what he was asking. "F-Four," he whispered back. "I think."

The other ghoul cursed quietly. "Stay down," he ordered Gob. Gritting his teeth, Charon raised the gun, correcting the aim so that his shot would clear the countertop. The first Raider standing in the doorway, a male with his hair in a mohawk, had been joined by a second one: a woman with blond hair in spikes like devil's horns.

"_That's it,"_ Gob heard Charon breathe, barely audible. He raised the gun a fraction of an inch further. _"That's it…._"

The female glanced past the male's shoulder and spat. "Ahhhh…_shit,_ Tuner," she sneered. "There ain't nobody in here. What kinda shit you tryin to—"

Her words cut off as Charon squeezed off two shots, panting through his teeth. The loud report of the gun echoed throughout the diner. His aim had been perfect; the heads of both Raiders exploded into a bloody mess of flesh and bone, spattering gore over the surroundings; a heartbeat later, there was the sound of bodies smacking into the concrete.

"Holy shit!" came Slice's voice from outside. "Holy _fuck!_"

"So there _is_ somebody in there," Rose's voice laughed. "Come on out an' say 'hi,' why don't ya?" There were more footsteps, and Gob could see more shadows moving in front of the door. Charon cursed again, breathing heavily.

"Are they leaving?" Gob whispered.

The other ghoul's filmy eyes drifted closed for a moment, and his body tightened in a spasm. "No," he rasped when he could speak again. "They're…going around to the sides—avoid a frontal assault. Don't stay there," he said, jerking his head at Gob's location. "No cover…through the windows it's a straight shot. _Damn,_" he growled, squeezing his eyes shut again and grinding his teeth.

"But where should I—" Gob began, when there was a loud _crack, _as of a stick breaking. Something _zinged_ by his head, very fast, and Slice's voice rang out in a gleeful taunt of _"Found ya!_"

Charon swung to deal with the threat, raising his gun. "_You want some?" _he snarled. Panicked, Gob scrambled as fast as he could on hands and knees to the other end of the diner, huddling under the far windows. Rapid gunfire rang out as Charon and the other Raider traded shots. Gob pressed his back to the wall, terrified, trying to fuse with the wall behind him. A shot from Slice bounced off the metal strut directly to the left of his head, and sparks singed his face. _God, just let me get out of here—_

"Oh no, baby, you ain't goin _nowhere_."

Skinny, strong arms shot through the broken window, wrapping around his shoulders in an amazingly powerful grip. Gob heard himself cry out; mindless with fear, he grabbed at them, trying to tear himself free, when the keen edge of a knife blade pressed itself to his throat.

Time seemed to stop. His body felt as if it had turned to stone. Total paralysis descended on him. A strange, crystal clarity seemed to infuse all his thoughts. _This is it._ _This is how I will die._ That high, sneering voice laughed in his ear.

"'Parently, you ain't as dumb as you are ugly." He recognized it as Rose's voice and Gob could have wept for his own stupidity. _How could I have forgotten that she was out there?_ The knife advanced another millimeter, digging into the exposed muscle of his throat. Gob dared not even swallow. "_Heh._ Feel that?" Rose snickered. He could feel her hot breath on the side of his face. "Don't worry, it ain't too sharp. Star liked sharp knives. I like dull ones better." She laughed again, cold and cruel. Her arms seemed strong as iron around him.

"Oh, p_lease_ let me go," he heard himself whine. "Please—_please_ just let me _go_—"

"I told Star I don't like doin zombies—not much fun there—but it looks like you got a lotta good stuff left on you still. I wonder how much? It'll be fun to find out," she laughed. Gob heard himself whimper. Charon was still shooting it out with Slice—bullets were zinging through the air—and with Rose's knife at his throat, he dared not call out.

"You squeal good. I like that. Tell you what, zombie," she taunted him. "I'm gonna play with you for a bit. Make you squeal. If you squeal good enough, then after I've had my fun, maybe I'll let you go, what's left of you." She gave a short, sharp laugh. "_Maybe._" The knife slid back and forth along his throat, a vicious parody of a caress. "What do you think of—"

A high-pitched snap and whine cut her off. Gob felt her body jerk against him and something warm splattered against the back of his neck and shirt. Rose's arms relaxed around him, then fell away. Gob flung himself away roughly, falling on his hands among the shattered glass and plate shards on the floor; he almost sobbed for joy to see a Tesla-armor-clad form standing framed in the window, plasma rifle still raised. Behind him there was a savage growl followed by a high-pitched yell: "_Ow! Bad dog! Get aw—" _The crack of a gunshot silenced Slice's cry.

"_Gob, are you all right?_" Samantha's voice crackled through the helmet. She reached up and took it off, hanging it again at her hip.

Gob was shivering. "Samantha….S-Samantha," he stammered helplessly. "I—I—" He swallowed. " Y-yes. I'm okay."

Samantha bit her lip. "I'm sorry, Gob," she apologized. "I did manage to find a group of maybe half a dozen Raiders following us—I dealt with them all, but I should have guessed that a couple would come back here—"

"F-Four," Gob said, shaking. "There were four of them. Ch-Charon—he shot the first two, but there—"

"_Charon?!"_

Samantha started in surprise, and her head swung toward her follower. She put her hand on the shattered sill, and in one single move she vaulted smoothly through the broken window. Her boots slammed into the tiled floor beneath, and she practically bounded to her follower's side. Dogmeat appeared at the door to the diner as she did so, tail wagging hopefully; he caught sight of Gob and barked. Samantha ignored him; her attention was focused on Charon.

"Are you all right?" she asked him.

Charon had collapsed back on the stretcher; the gun he had taken from Gob had fallen from his loose hand. His breath came ragged and rasping; his head was tipped back against the headrest and his face was contorted with pain. As Samantha knelt by his side, he turned his head toward her. "Mistress," he forced out.

"Are—are you shot?" Samantha asked, her voice trembling.

"No, Mistress," he whispered hoarsely. Samantha drew a breath in relief.

"Gob says you shot two of the Raiders. Is that true?"

"Three, Mistress. But….Dogmeat helped with the last." Charon rolled his eyes toward the Blue Heeler, who came trotting up to his side; the dog's tail was down, and he whined unhappily. Samantha closed her eyes. She reached for the ghoul's hand and squeezed it, lowering her head.

"At least you're all right. Thank God," she said fervently. "If the Raiders had gotten you—" She broke off and squeezed the ghoul's hand again, then drew a breath. "How are you doing otherwise?"

"I—have been better, Mistress," Charon admitted. He swallowed. "Mistress, I am….I am so thirsty," he whispered. Gob could see fresh bloodstains seeping through the bandages swathing his torso.

Samantha closed her eyes. "I can't give you anything, Charon," she said quietly. "Doc Church said that with the gut wounds, even water might be fatal. It might do you in before we even can get you to Vault 87. Think you—" Her voice faltered. "Think you can tough it out, big guy?"

Charon swallowed again, and a dry tongue slipped out to lick at his parched, leathery lips. "If it is what my mistress commands, then I will obey." His face spasmed, and he groaned in pain. Samantha immediately reached for a hypo of Med-X, only have Charon stop her with a hand on her wrist.

"No."

"Charon, you _need_ this. Doc Church said—"

"_No._" He grimaced. "Not yet. If I were to—to take the hypo now…It would leave you one gun down, Mistress." His loose hand groped vaguely for the gun he had let fall. Dogmeat whined again and pushed his nose into the ghoul's palm, and Charon's hand tightened spasmodically in something that might have been a caress.

"Charon!" Samantha demanded, her eyes wet. "Don't try to be a hero. There's no _reason_ to suffer like this! Take the hypo!"

"In…a while, Mistress. The pain—" He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. "The pain is….bearable. For now."

Samantha considered that, biting her lip. "Do you promise that the minute it gets to be too much, you'll ask for the hypo?"

Charon nodded. "I promise, Mistress." His face twitched.

"Okay. Okay, then," she said unsteadily. She drew a breath, and then straightened her shoulders, visibly taking hold of herself. Her jaw tightened as the distance slipped back into her eyes. "Can you travel, Charon?"

"As you command, Mistress," he responded.

"Then let's go." She reached down and carefully laid the weapon he had dropped back in the stretcher by his outstretched hand. "Gob, come here and help me secure these straps."

Gob came and knelt by them, helping to refasten the straps around Charon's body. Charon glanced at him briefly, then closed his eyes again. His hand tightened around the gun. Gob looked away. _Keep your hands off weapons,_ echoed in his head.

Together he and Samantha knelt between the poles. They tried to lift the stretcher as gently as possible, but Charon still grunted in pain. Samantha's shoulders tightened. "I'm sorry," Gob found himself apologizing. He hadn't expected the other ghoul to answer, but Charon's milky eyes opened.

"Just go," he growled. He closed his eyes again, and his jaw tightened as Samantha and Gob carefully wound their way around the counter, carrying him out of the ruined diner.


	4. Chapter 4

The next few hours, as they continued their slow, agonizing crawl over the landscape, became ones of torture for Gob. Charon's stretcher seemed to weigh more and more with each step. The ache in his shoulders deepened into a dull burning that intensified by the hour, until it became so bad he almost did not know how he could go on. His upper back was afire with pain, and the skin remaining on his fingers was being rubbed raw from clasping the handles of the stretcher. He hadn't been in such misery since the Slaver caravan. As he had done then, Gob willed himself to go numb; he tried to simply switch off his brain, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other and staring at Samantha's armored, unyielding back. Samantha strode on mechanically, as if she were some form of automaton immune to such mundane, human things as exhaustion, hunger and thirst, totally focused on reaching her destination. _Come on, _Gob panted to himself as they dragged the stretcher uphill or maneuvered it around some rocks. _If a little thing like her can do it, then a tough ghoul like you should be able to do it too. Just keep going…just one more step…and one more after that…and one more after that…. _And when the pain in his back and shoulders became too great for even that to help, Gob dropped his eyes to where Charon lay on the stretcher. _Whatever you're enduring, it can't be as bad as what he is going through._

Charon lay strapped in, quiet and unmoving in the restraints. He said nothing, but he still held the Blackhawk in one hand; his filmy eyes were open, and hellishly bright. They moved, taking in everything around him, constantly alert for—Gob had no idea what he was looking for, but he assumed it was threats of some kind. His breathing was rasping and tortured, hissing through his teeth; his visible muscles spasmed irregularly. From time to time, his eyes would drift closed, but he would always re-open them with a jerk, refusing to allow himself the soothing embrace of sleep. Gob could not even imagine the agony Charon must have been in but the other ghoul showed almost no sign of it: a tension in his limbs, a grunt or two when Gob and Samantha had difficulty maneuvering the stretcher. About midday, they came to a fork in the road. Samantha paused for a moment, then told Gob, "We need to swing south to avoid Fort Bannister."

"What's Fort Bannister?" Gob had asked her. He had never heard of it.

"It's the headquarters of Talon Company," Samantha had replied, glancing back over her shoulder. "We've crossed paths before....Trust me when I say we're in no shape to tangle with them now."

"Oh." Gob bit his lip and resettled the stretcher in his hands. His fingers seemed permanently frozen into their grip around the handles; they were somehow numb and aching at once. His hands felt like blocks of wood at the end of his arms.

Detouring around Fort Bannister meant leaving the road for a time; scrambling through rocks, over unpaved ground, and at least once through a torn-up trench that went on for almost half a mile. Gob tried to be careful, but the ground was uneven and he was already fatigued; he stumbled, fell to his knees, and was only able to keep from dropping the stretcher by an effort of will. Charon hissed in pain; Gob winced uneasily. As the two of them stopped and backed up, trying to push the stretcher up a steep slope, Charon spoke.

"Why did you not fire?"

Gob started and almost dropped the stretcher again, saving it at the last moment. "Wh-what?" he faltered, glancing at Samantha. The armored woman did not look back toward them; Gob did not know if she'd even heard.

"In the diner. When the Raiders came. You had a shot and yet you did not take it. Why?"

The words were a rasping whisper, noticeably weaker than before. Charon's bright, feverish eyes fixed on him; his lantern jaw set. Gob swallowed under that regard, resettling the stretcher handles in his raw and aching hands.

"I—I was afraid," he admitted shamefacedly.

Charon said nothing, but his rheumy eyes remained locked on Gob, demanding. Gob bit his lip, and somehow found himself opening up to the other ghoul. "When—when I heard their voices, I—all of a sudden, I was back in the slave pens in Paradise Falls," he confessed unsteadily. "It was just like I was a slave again—I was so scared that I couldn't think. All I wanted to do was hide." The _only_ good thing about Moriarty buying him, Gob thought morosely, had been getting him away from the Slavers.

Charon considered that as Gob and Samantha threaded the stretcher through some boulder piles. His breathing was uneven, and he was gritting his teeth. At last, as they began to lurch downhill, he spoke again. "It is not chains that make a slave, and weapons will not free one. You are still a slave," he pronounced in that raspy whisper, "and worse, you are a coward. You will be one as long as you are the other." He turned his head to the side and closed his eyes. His flaking hands clenched spasmodically on the sides of the stretcher. Gob swallowed this in silence. _After all,_ he thought bitterly, _it's true, isn't it?_

[*]

It was almost full dark and the first stars were twinkling in the sky by the time Samantha finally called a halt. For the last couple hours, Gob had been dead on his feet with exhaustion, stumbling after Samantha as if he were, in truth, the mindless zombie that so many people thought ghouls were. When Samantha stopped, he missed it and almost crashed into her with the back of the stretcher. The sudden shock jolted him back to himself somewhat; he shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind.

"Samantha?" he faltered.

She glanced back at him. "Put Charon down," she told him. "Over there."

Gob looked where she nodded. A stony shelf jutted out some feet above, creating a bit of a sheltered space. The dirt was hard-packed beneath it, and there was a fire-blackened steel drum. They were in rocky territory; the recess was surrounded by more piles of stone, creating a wind break and giving them some cover from prying eyes. "It's getting too dark to go on in this kind of terrain," she explained. "If I were on my own, I would, but, while trying to carry Charon too—" She trailed off.

Together the two of them knelt to lay the stretcher on the ground. It felt strange to be unburdened after so long. Gob's hands, arms and shoulders had gone completely dead; they prickled with tiny needles that felt as if they would shortly turn into lances of pain. He shook them, trying to bring back the blood flow, and turned his hands over to look at the skin left on his palms. He bit his lip at the sight: huge, bloody blisters were rising on his hands, in fact several had already broken and raw, oozing flesh was exposed underneath. Samantha saw him looking, and sighed.

"I'm sorry, Gob," she said quietly.

Gob was silent for a moment, then shrugged. "It's only skin," he said, managing a smile. Samantha nodded, then went to kneel by Charon's side. The other ghoul's eyes opened. They were vague and wandering.

"Mistress?"

Samantha swallowed. "I'm here."

Charon seemed to find her, and his gaze focused. After a moment, he breathed in. "I am _very_ thirsty, Mistress," he whispered.

Samantha closed her eyes. Gob could see lines of moisture on her cheeks, reflecting the flickering green light of her armor. Beside her, Dogmeat came up and whined softly. "I know. I'm sorry, Charon." She reached out and brushed some lank, discolored strands of hair back from the ghoul's peeling forehead. "I can give you a hypo of Med-X—will you take it now?" He had consistently refused Med-X throughout the day, despite her repeated entreaties.

"Yes, please, Mistress," he whispered. Samantha pulled out the hypo, and injected him, then took one of his scabrous hands in her own. She knelt by him, holding his hand, as his eyes drifted closed again. Eventually, his breathing evened out. Samantha gently replaced his hand, then sat back on her heels, gazing down at him. Charon tossed a bit, then mumbled something indistinctly and became still again.

"Is that English?" Gob hadn't been able to make out the words, but it hadn't sounded like English.

Samantha shrugged. "I don't know. He's never said much about his past." She stroked his forehead again.

Gob, watching, ventured, "You—" As she turned to look at him, he faltered. "Do—Do you—love him?"

"Not like you mean it, but yeah," Samantha said quietly. "His being here has made so much of a difference in my life—I can't even imagine what it would be like without him. Before he came…." She trailed off. Her face grew shadowed. "You have no idea how lonely it can get out here," she confessed. "How it can just beat you down—the silence, the emptiness—day after day, until…. Sometimes I think that's the worst part about the Wastelands: just the loneliness. It's—" She paused. "I think I was dying inside before I found him," she said in a low voice. "Using too many chems, taking too many chances, I….Let's just say I was not in a good place," she said at last.

Gob nodded. He remembered the way she had looked the first couple of months after she had climbed out of the Vault: as if she were slowly wasting away, consuming herself from the inside. He and Nova had even speculated, privately, on how long it would be before one day she went out there and just didn't come back.

"I don't know," Samantha continued. "Maybe I would have been okay if I hadn't found him. But deep down inside, I don't really think so. He gave me something—some_one_—to live for. Something outside of myself to hang onto." She sighed. "Does he feel the same way? I don't know. Anyway, it doesn't matter." She glanced over at Dogmeat, who was lying down next to Charon, and reached out, ruffling the dog's fur. Dogmeat licked Samantha's hand politely, then tucked his nose under his tail. There was silence for a while, then Samantha turned to him. "Here," she said. "Let me see your hands."

He held out his hands, and Samantha examined them. The numbness was fading, and the ache was settling deeper and deeper into his overstrained muscles. His hands felt as if they had been barbecued. Even the gentle brush of the breeze against his exposed flesh stung. Samantha took some bandages from her leg armor and wrapped them, smearing them first with pre-war ointment. Gob sighed with relief as the ointment sank into his raw flesh, soothing and cooling. Both of them knew that Gob would have to go on tomorrow; neither of them said anything about it, for there was nothing to be done. Samantha got up and began to kindle a fire in the fire drum.

"We didn't make it as far as I wanted to today," she said with a sigh, "but I think we made it far enough. With luck, we should get to the outskirts of Vault 87 by tomorrow midmorning." The fire crackled as it caught, and a red glow bloomed out of the top of the drum. Gob moved closer to it gratefully; the chill in the night air was beginning to set in, soaking through the leather armor he wore. "Since we _are_ stopped," Samantha continued, "I figure I might as well take a quick look around—make sure we're alone out here and that nothing is going to come and ambush us in the middle of the night. I'll leave Dogmeat here," she said, gesturing to the furry ball of the Blue Heeler. "Will you be comfortable with that, Gob?"

_No, _Gob wanted to say, _don't leave me,_ but the memory of Charon's words earlier silenced him. "_Ahhh,_ sure," he said with a confidence he didn't feel. "I'll be fine."

"Okay. I'll be back in a bit."

As Samantha gave the fire a final poke, then took her helmet from her waist, Gob's eyes wandered past her to the darkening purple skyline. Far to the south, the black outline of a tower stood out in sharp silhouette, dark against the stars. "Before you go—what's that there?" he asked her, gesturing to the tower.

"That's Tenpenny Tower." The words were clipped brutally short. Gob turned to look at her, but her face was taut, revealing nothing.

"Oh. T-Tenpenny Tower?" Gob frowned. It sounded familiar for some reason. He searched his memory, then after a bit, he had it. "Hey, that's the tower that Roy Phillips and those ghouls were trying to get into, isn't it?" he said excitedly, remembering one of Three Dog's broadcasts. "Did they make it?"

"They did," Samantha said, even more curtly than before.

Gob studied the tower again. It was totally black against the sky; there were no lights coming from it at all. "Strange that it doesn't look inhabited." There was something almost sinister about that black shape, looming up above the hills of the Wastes; it seemed a vast, brooding presence, casting a shadow over its surroundings. "Do you know if anyone's still living there, or—"

"I have to go." Samantha donned her helmet, cutting him off sharply. _"I'll be back,"_ her voice crackled through the synthesizers. She took out her plasma rifle and strode off, leaving Gob alone behind her.

The night darkened around him, and the air continued to chill. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire in the drum, the soft sighing of the wind, and, from time to time, a few unintelligible mumbles from Charon. _I see what Samantha meant about the silence,_ Gob thought. In Megaton, there were always sounds at night; the lowing of Brahmin, the far-off sounds of distant voices, the hum of generators. Here there was nothing; just the immensity of the night. He, Dogmeat and Charon might as well be the only people in the world. Gob shivered, wrapping his arms around himself, and drew closer to the warmth of the fire. _It's so spooky out here…._

Dogmeat's ears pricked up. He uncurled and got to his feet, pacing to the edge of the firelight and staring into the darkness. A low growl formed in his throat. Gob looked over at him. "Do you see something?" he asked.

Dogmeat's growl deepened. His tail curled up over his back, and he gave a short bark. Gob went to him and peered out into the dark. He could see nothing. He listened, but no sounds came.

"There's nothing out there. Lie down," he told the dog.

Dogmeat ignored him. His lip curled back from his teeth. The dog's hackles were actually standing up on the back of his neck. The rumbling in his throat exploded into a series of loud barks. Gob cursed under his breath. _If there __**is **__anything out there, they'll hear that and come looking for us right away—_

"_Quiet,_ Dogmeat!" he ordered the dog. "Quiet! Sit down! Sit!" Desperate and not knowing what to do, he grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck and pushed on his hindquarters, trying to quiet him. Dogmeat continued to bark, furiously. In something of a panic, Gob tried to clamp his aching hands around the dog's muzzle. "There's nothing _out_ there!" he repeated. "Be _quiet_ and—"

Low laughter came bubbling out of the darkness beyond the ring of firelight.

Gob froze, his heart in his throat. "Who—Who is it?" he demanded, hearing his voice tremble. "Samantha? Is—Is that you?"

The laughter came again. "It's not Samantha," a polite voice called out.

Dogmeat's bonechilling growl seemed to reverberate through Gob's chest. He tightened his grip on the scruff of the dog's neck, trying to still his trembling; with one hand, he groped for the weapons holster at his hip. "I—I'm warning you, I'm armed!" he called, then cursed again as his hands closed on air; _Charon still has the gun,_ he remembered, too late.

"So are we," another clear, smooth voice called. "Isn't everyone out here?" There was a pause, during which time Gob could hear some low murmuring. Then the first voice called again, "We're going to come closer now. Just so you can see us. Is that all right?"

Gob considered that. Dogmeat was fighting against his grip, snarling. "A-All right," he acquiesced. "But not _too_ close. I'm not sure how much longer I can hold the dog back."

Gob backed toward Charon as footsteps shuffled toward him out of the darkness. Dogmeat was going wild; he had to wrap his arms around the dog's chest and physically drag him backwards. As the shapes of the newcomers emerged out of the darkness, Gob shoved Dogmeat's hindquarters down, hard, and shouted at him, _"Bad dog! Sit!_" For a moment, one blue eye and one brown stared at him balefully and Gob almost recoiled; but Dogmeat did as he was told, though his teeth were bared and he was trembling with aggression. Gob quickly knelt to retrieve the pistol from Charon's hands and then turned to face the newcomers, hoping he didn't look as scared as he felt.

There were three of them standing just at the edge of the firelight: two men and a woman, all wearing leather armor so dark that it was almost black. Their hair and eyes were dark as well, and glossy, while their complexions were pale and clear; they looked as if they might all be related. Unlike the scrawny, underfed and jittery Raiders, this group appeared to be in good health; Gob didn't see any of the tell-tale signs of illness or chem addiction. They were armed with hunting rifles and combat knives; the woman had a long-barreled sniper rifle at her back. They made no aggressive moves, simply waiting for him to speak.

"Wh-what do you want?" he demanded, curving one injured hand around the stock of his pistol.

The woman smiled. "We want only to come close enough to share your fire. That's all. Will you let us? We're the Hunters," she added as an afterthought.

_The Hunters…._ Something tugged at his memory, but was gone before he could retrieve it. Gob studied them. They waited patiently under his scrutiny, keeping their hands well away from their weapons. Dogmeat's growl continued unabated; Gob turned on him and ordered, again, _"Be quiet!_" to no effect. At last, he nodded. "Okay," he said finally. "But I'm warning you: Don't try anything funny." What he could do to stop them if they did, he had no idea; there were three of them to one of him, and they looked to be better armed.

"Thank you," one of the men said courteously, and they came forward just to the fire drum; they made no attempt to move any closer. "We appreciate your hospitality," he continued. "Not many in the Wastes welcome strangers."

"Try being a ghoul," Gob said dourly. There was more polite laughter. The Hunters put down their packs and began settling in. Summoning his courage, he ventured, "Where are you from?"

"Here and there," the other man said.

"Down south," the woman chimed in. "Near Fairfax, if you know where that is."

Gob shrugged. The words meant nothing to him. "What brings you up this way?"

"Hunting," the first man said, and the three of them shared a small, secret smile. Dogmeat kept up his growling, a low rumble just at the edge of hearing. A thin feather-touch of unease brushed Gob's heart.

"A long way to come for hunting," he ventured.

"Well, game is growing scarce down south," the woman said apologetically. "You know how it is."

"Times are tough all over," Gob offered.

"They certainly are," the second man agreed. The Hunters gathered around the drum and began to make themselves at home, putting down their packs and beginning to set up camp. The first man extracted several skewers from his pack and threaded them with chunks of meat, then laid the skewers over the fire in the drum. The meat sizzled as the flames brushed it, and a rich aroma wafted up. Gob bit his lip.

"That smells good. Is it Mirelurk?" he asked.

"The most delicious meat of all," the man affirmed. "Care to try some?"

Gob shook his head regretfully. "I'm allergic to shellfish."

There was more quiet laughter. "Your loss," the woman said with a shrug. There was silence for a time as the Hunters settled in, beginning to work on their weapons as they waited for their food to be done. Dogmeat eventually laid down, though he never took his eyes from the Hunters and the low, rumbling growl kept up in his throat. At the back of the shallow depression, under the rock ledge, Charon tossed again in his restraints, mumbling; then he was still again.

"We don't really see many ghouls out here," said the first man, looking up at Gob. His white, even teeth gleamed in a smile and his dark eyes were very bright. Again, that thin edge of unease brushed him. "Where are you from, if you don't mind my asking?"

"I'm from—" Gob paused. "Underworld, originally."

"Oh?" The woman turned toward him. "How long ago did you leave?"

"A while ago." Gob shifted, somewhat uncomfortable though he could not have given a reason why. _Hunters…_ The word tugged at his memory again.

"I see your friend there—" the first man gestured toward Charon "—is also a ghoul. Are you headed back there?"

"Not exactly," Gob replied.

"No?" the man asked. Gob simply shook his head.

"Your friend looks as if he is sick," the woman said now, looking over at Charon, where he still lay strapped into his stretcher.

"Something like that," Gob admitted cautiously. The woman's eyes gleamed.

"It must be difficult, trying to drag him over the Wastes all by yourself."

"Oh, we're not alone," Gob hastened to say. "There's someone else with us, and she's been helping me carry the stretcher. She just left to take a quick look around, but she should be back shortly." Uneasily he wondered where Samantha was and what was taking her so long.

"I see." The meat sizzled, and the woman rose to her feet and collected the skewers from the fire. She doled them out to her companions, and the three of them fell to with decent appetite. There was a bit more silence while they ate.

"How is it?" Gob asked.

"It's okay," the woman shrugged, licking her fingers. "It might have been better if it were the slightest bit aged, though." She gave that secret smile again, and Gob's unease spiked. _Something is not right here,_ he thought. Maddeningly, whatever it was he was trying to remember danced just out of reach.

The first man finished picking a few last shreds of meat off his skewer, and he looked back up at Gob with those shining eyes. "So…when did you say your friend was coming back?"

"Oh, she should be back any time," Gob said quickly, edging toward Dogmeat. Dogmeat was still growling, almost inaudibly. "Any time at all. So," he said, wetting his lips, "you're the Hunters?"

"That's right," the second man said, with a smile that showed far too many teeth.

"Wh—" He broke off, swallowing. "What do you hunt, exactly? Mirelurk?"

"Oh, whatever we can," the second man said. "Whatever we can catch, we hunt. Sometimes we have to track our prey for miles, but other times…." He gave that eerie smile again. "Other times, our prey practically invites us in."

"Is that so," Gob said faintly. And suddenly he had it; the connection burst into his brain, complete and whole. _Hunters…_Gob thought as horror filled him. _Hunters of __**Men—**__!_

Now he remembered hearing Samantha talk about it: how from time to time she would come across groups in the Wastes, clad in leather armor, chasing down some poor fleeing Wastelander; what they would do to the Wastelander if she failed to get there in time. His body seemed to go numb. His hands were shaking. His mouth was so dry that his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. They were all looking at him with their overly-bright eyes, and now he recognized that look for what it was: the stare of a predator eyeing its prey. The panic filled his mind, making it hard to think. _Flee, _his fear hammered at him, _flee, flee, __**flee**__!_

Gob actually started to rise—he stirred and made a hesitant move toward the edge of the camp—before he stopped himself. _Can't flee,_ he thought desperately. _They'll catch me if I do. _All of them were armed and the woman had a sniper rifle; they could take him from quite a distance if he did. _And even if I __**do**__ escape….then there'll be nobody to protect Charon._ Charon was helpless, injured and unconscious on his stretcher; if he ran, then—_then they'll…get him._ The image of the Hunters of Men surrounding the defenseless Charon and…and doing things to him—made him sick to think about. His eyes darted to the skewers still lying in the fire, and he shuddered. _No._ _I can't leave Charon, I __**can't.**_ He felt frozen with fear. _What am I going to do? Samantha, where __**are**__ you?_

The Hunters were smiling now, bright toothy smiles. Gob's mind raced, searching for some idea, _any_ idea to save him. _Shoot them, _he thought, but discarded the idea at once; he'd have to drop all three of them before any of them got a shot off. He suspected Samantha could have done it; and he was sure that Charon could have. Gob knew that his shooting prowess was nowhere near theirs. _Keep your hands off weapons,_ he heard Charon's raspy voice again. His eyes kept straying to the discarded skewers and the shreds of meat clinging to them, and he felt his gorge rise; he swallowed hard. His mind cast about in panic, searching for something, anything…._Think, you coward, __**think!**_

"Wh-where are you headed?" he stammered, playing for time, hoping that their answer would reveal something that would be helpful to him.

"Nowhere in particular," murmured the woman. She casually moved her sniper rifle from her back, as if she were preparing to clean it.

"Possibly up north," the first man said. He was fingering the stock of his hunting rifle.

"Oh." Gob licked his lips. A wild thought slipped into his head; Gob seized it immediately. He had no idea if it would work, but there was nothing else. "I w-was going to tell you—if you were headed to Underworld—to stay clear."

"Is that so," murmured the second man politely. He checked the load of his own weapon. His dark eyes—all their eyes—were shining.

"Yeah. There's—there's a sickness in Underworld right now, as a matter of fact," Gob said, his voice gaining strength. "That's why my friend—my friends," he corrected himself "and I came out here—to get away from it."

The three of them exchanged glances. Gob had no idea what the looks they gave each other meant. "A…sickness," the woman said.

"Yeah. The doctor there, Doc Barrows, said he's never seen anything like it before," Gob continued, improvising quickly. "He tried all the pre-war junk he had on hand, but there was nothing that could touch it. He and Nurse Graves think it might have been some sort of pre-war bioweapon lying around, and that maybe the supermutants stirred it up—they've been digging around the Mall lately. Whatever it is, it's rough on ghouls, but _really_ does a number on smoothskins." Listening to himself, Gob couldn't believe he was saying all this stuff—couldn't believe, either, that it actually sounded somewhat plausible. The three Hunters had paused in toying with their weapons and were listening to him, though their expressions were unreadable.

"Is that so?" the first man asked, with a bit more interest this time.

"Oh yeah," Gob fervently insisted. "Finally Winston—he's sort of the guy in charge of Underworld—decided to close it off until the disease had died down—quarantine the area. Or at least, we heard he was going to. My friends and I decided we wouldn't stick around for that, and we managed to get out before he locked the doors. I think it was too late though." He tried to look somber—though he didn't know if it would matter; it had been his experience that smoothskins generally couldn't read ghouls' expressions—and glanced at Charon. "A couple of days ago my friend there started complaining that he wasn't feeling so good. At first we were hoping it was something else, but he just kept getting worse and worse until he collapsed this morning. We carried him as far as we could, but finally he got so bad we just couldn't go on. My friend left me here to watch him while she went out to look and see if she could find any medicine for him—"

"Not much chance of finding medicine around here," murmured the second man.

Gob swallowed. "I know. We should have stopped earlier, but—" _But what?_ Gob's mind came up blank. "But, well, you know. Coulda, shoulda, woulda," he said with an unfeigned grimace. "Hindsight is always 20/20, and all that. Anyway, I-I just thought I would warn you. You folks might want to be moving on before too long," he added, wetting his lips again. "It's catching, you know, and it's much worse for smoothskins than it is for us." A sudden burst of inspiration struck him, and Gob seized it and ran with it. He wondered again in the back of his mind just where in creation he was getting such ideas from; he would never have believed that he could lie so quickly and so well. "My friend there—" he jerked a thumb at Charon "—actually _is_ a smoothskin. Or he was, but the sickness…." Gob bit his lip, trying to look uncertain. It wasn't too difficult. "Like I was saying, it's probably best for you to get on quickly."

The three Hunters of Men turned to stare at each other for a long moment, their dark eyes flickering unreadably. Gob curled his hand around the butt of the pistol he had taken from Charon, more for comfort than anything else. His heart was in his throat. The moment stretched out, and he dared for an instant to hope—

Then the woman looked back at him. "You are a gifted storyteller," she said, smiling that too-bright smile. "Very believable. But unfortunately for you, the last prey we took, not two days before, had just come from Underworld, and he said nothing about any plague there. So you are out of luck, prey."

She raised her weapon now, pointing it directly at him. Behind her, the other two Hunters did the same. The three of them cocked their weapons and panic filled Gob. He raised his hands, trembling. "Wait—please, I—please—"

"It's been a long time since we've taken a ghoul," the second man said. "Ghoul flesh is a rare treat. I can't wait to—"

"_Get away from him!_"

The whining of powered armor filled the campsite as Samantha strode forward out of the darkness. Gob could have wept to see her. The arc lighting of her Tesla armor crackled around her, making her look like a demon out of some prewar story, and she held her plasma rifle at the ready. Her helmet was off, hanging at her hip, and Gob cringed at the anger on her face. This was not the cold dispassion that she had shown when she had shot Moriarty; this was a fundamental hatred –a _loathing—_that made Gob want to cower. A collective hiss went up from the Hunters of Men, and Gob saw the same loathing reflected on their faces.

"_You,_" one of the men spat.

"That's right. It's me," Samantha snarled. The air around her was electric with danger. Dogmeat rose from his sitting position and began to bark furiously, his lip curled, showing teeth. Gob had never heard such gruesome sounds come from a dog's throat before. "Get away from here right now, you jackals, or so help me, I'll splatter your filthy brains all over the dirt."

"You can't," the woman said coolly. "There are three of us to one of you. You can shoot one of us, but while you do that--"

"Take your best shot, filth," Samantha replied. "We'll see just how well those hunting rifles do against Tesla armor."

"Not _you,"_ the woman said, laughing. The sound was discordant, frightening. "Your friends. Your rotten, undefended, oh-so-vulnerable _friends._" She showed teeth again. "Two of them—and three of us. Do you think you can get all three of us before we manage to take down one of them?"

Samantha stared at them as the lightning arced around her. Her face worked. "I don't _care!_" she almost shouted. "If you don't get out of here _right this instant,_ I _will_ shoot you and odds be damned. _Go!"_

She sighted along her weapon. The Hunters of Men exchanged a look, then slowly began to edge backwards, their own rifles still pointed at their targets. The female held Samantha's eyes. "This isn't over," she told her. "You're young and soft—succulent, one might say. Someday we will feast. 'Messiah' or no."

Samantha jerked her chin at her left wrist, where her Pip-Boy 3000 was. "You have three minutes to vanish completely off my radar. And if I catch you following us—and I _will_ catch you—you'll never feast again."

"Someday," the woman said only, and they faded into the darkness. Samantha's eyes lowered, watching her Pip-Boy screen. Gob waited, scarcely daring to breathe. At last, Samantha's taut, hyper-alert stance relaxed slightly.

"They're gone." She was shaking with emotion. "Bastards. Bastards, bastards, _bastards!_" She hawked and spat at the place where they had stood. Gob flinched. "Vermin. Filth. _Jackals._ _God,_ I hate them." She looked like she wanted to spit again. "I should have shot them all like the radroaches they are—but with Charon—" Samantha stopped herself and drew a breath, visibly getting herself under control. "I had no idea they were out here. Gob, are you and Charon okay?"

Gob swallowed, trying to calm himself. "I—yes. I—tried to stall them, they didn't—" His eyes went to the fire, where the skewers still lay, and his stomach lurched horribly. "I-I think I have to—" Abruptly he stumbled to the edge of the firelight and fell to his knees, vomiting into the dirt. Shamefacedly, he straightened, wiping his mouth. "I'm sorry—I'm sorry, I—"

"It's okay," Samantha said quietly. "I did the same thing, the first time I realized who they were and what they were doing." She moved over to the drum and tipped the skewers gently into the coals. They caught and burned brightly, falling into ash. "There are definitely things worse than Raiders out here. I hate those bastards even worse than the Enclave," she said, her voice shaking. "They're worse than animals. Just the thought of what they would—" She stopped herself again. "Anyway, they're gone now," she said as if forcibly reminding herself.

Samantha moved to check on Charon while Gob collected himself, trying to get his stomach under control. She looked up from the other ghoul. "You should probably turn in. We have more walking to do tomorrow," she told him gently. "I'll take first watch. They probably won't be back; the Hunters of Men are nothing if not cowards—but if they _do_ come back, Dogmeat will know and warn us."

"Oh—okay," he said faintly. He awkwardly lay down, close to the fire, and tried to get comfortable; he hadn't slept on dirt in a long, long time. _Since the Slaver caravan,_ he thought, swallowing. He closed his eyes, trying to blot out the images in his head. After a time, he succeeded.


	5. Chapter 5

His dreams that night were very bad. He dreamed that he was back in the Slaver caravan, being driven on over the desiccated hell of the Wastes. The Slavers had beaten him mercilessly across his shoulders and arms; they ached so badly he could barely lift them, with a pain that seemed to sink all the way down into his bones. Gob was terrified, because he knew where they were taking him: to the three hunters with their black leather armor and their bright, gleaming teeth. They had sold him to the hunters, and the hunters would cut him into meat and eat him up. He could see them, their knives out, taunting him, but he was trapped and couldn't flee; the Slavers were laughing at him as the Hunters came nearer and nearer—

He jerked awake with a cry, to find that he was in the same place where he had slept the night before: the small campsite that Samantha had found, sheltered with rock walls and an overhanging lip of stone. Dawn was just beginning to creep into the air; he could see the first traces of light appearing in the gray sky. The fire in the drum had long since burned out; even the ashes had stopped smoking.

As early as it was, Gob could see that Samantha was already up and stirring. She was repairing her plasma rifle, while at her feet, Dogmeat chewed on a piece of Brahmin steak. She was still in her Tesla armor; Gob wondered if she had even gone to bed last night. _If she did, she sure didn't wake me to take a watch._ Her eyes found him.

"You're awake," she said.

"I—had a bad dream," he replied, somewhat sheepishly. Samantha nodded.

"I suppose it's just as well. I want to get moving very soon. You should eat—I want to move fast today. I have some more Brahmin meat and a couple of mutfruits, if you want either of them, as well as an Iguana-on-a-Stick."

"I'll take the mutfruits," Gob said. He started to sit up—and froze, hissing in agony. Even that slight movement caused the muscles in his back and arms to howl, sending huge spikes of pain through him. His shoulders and chest were on fire; even the muscles in his abdomen ached unbearably. His entire body seemed to lock up, going rigid; he breathed through his clenched teeth, biting back a cry and waiting desperately for the pain to subside so that he could relax again. At last, the agony abated somewhat and he was able to lie back down again, breathing hard and cursing under his breath. _Shit. Shit. Shit—_ He had no idea how he could even walk like this, let alone carry Charon; just the thought of trying to sit up again filled him with trembling fear.

Samantha had spotted his distress. "Are you okay, Gob?" she asked, putting aside her rifle.

"No. No," he said, swallowing. "Samantha, I can't move. It hurts too much."

Samantha bit her lip. "I worried about that."

"I don't know if I can go on," he said unhappily. "What are we going to do?"

"Here." Samantha got to her feet and came to crouch next to him. She pulled out a hypo of Med-X. "I'm going to give you some of this to start with—Med-X, just to kill the pain and relax you a bit. Are you okay with that?"

"Please," he begged. "I can't stand this."

Samantha nodded. She placed the hypo against his shoulder and he felt the prick of the needle going in; then sighed in relief as the numbness swept over his body. As he felt the tension in his limbs ease, she took out a dark-brown pill bottle and unscrewed the top, dumping out two green pills. She placed these in his hand. "It's Buff-out. Take some of that."

Gob bit his lip. With the help of the hypo, he managed to raise the pills to his mouth and swallow them. Within moments he felt strength flowing into him and the remaining stiffness in his limbs abate. Gingerly he tried to sit up and found he could move almost normally.

"Better?" Samantha asked, with a bit of a wry smile.

"Yes," he replied. He tried to stand and found he could do that as well. "Thanks. That was...pretty bad."

"Yeah—unfortunately, the effect is only temporary." Samantha got to her feet as well and pressed the bottle of pills into his hand. "Here. Keep this on you. Whenever you feel the strength start to go and the pain start to return, just take some more of it."

"Okay." Gob hesitated uneasily. "Is—isn't Buff-out addictive, though?" he ventured, glancing at her.

"Yes it is," Samantha said quietly. The distant stranger that he had seen earlier was back in her eyes. "Not as bad as Jet or Psycho, but it is. But unfortunately, we've got a lot of ground to cover today and I need you to help carry Charon." She sighed, though the distance did not abate. "I'm sorry, Gob," she confessed, "but Charon doesn't have a lot of time left and we don't have a lot of choices. I know for a fact that if you _do_ get addicted, Doc Church can cure it. He can't cure death."

Gob bit his lip, thinking it over. "Okay," he said finally, and tucked the bottle into his pocket. Samantha handed him the mutfruit he had asked for and he bit into it, grimacing at its pulpy texture and sickly-sweet taste. The slight _zing_ of the radiation helped make it a bit more palatable, and he finished it quickly, licking the juice from his fingers. "How is—" He nodded awkwardly in Charon's direction.

"Not good." Samantha looked grim.

Gob glanced over at the other ghoul and shivered. There was something almost unnaturally still about him. "Is he—"

"He's still breathing," Samantha reassured him, "but he's weaker. He hasn't woken since I gave him the last hypo, and it should have worn off by now." She clenched and unclenched her fists nervously. "We _need_ to get him to the Vault, as fast as possible. If we don't do it today—" She trailed off. Left unspoken: _If we don't do it today, it'll be too late. _"Let me see your hands."

Gob held out his hands and Samantha unbandaged them, examining the blisters that had been raised there the previous day. They had burst and were oozing. Gob swallowed and looked away as she reapplied the ointment and rebandaged them. "You shouldn't have to carry him for that much longer," she tried to reassure him.

"It's okay," Gob replied. "After all," he added, smiling slightly, "the radiation around the Vault should heal me too. All we need to do is get there."

"Right." Samantha got to her feet. "Are you ready? Then let's go."

Together they knelt between the poles of Charon's stretcher and lifted him. Charon did not so much as move as they did this; only the slightest rise and fall of his chest still demonstrated that he lived. Gob shifted the stretcher in his hands, and found it wasn't as bad as he had feared; if anything, the stretcher seemed lighter than it had yesterday. _Probably the Buffout, _he knew.

"Are you okay back there, Gob?" Samantha asked, turning her head to look at him.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied and was surprised to find that it was true; Charon seemed almost as light as a feather in his hands.

"Then let's go," she said. "Dogmeat! Come on, boy!"

The Blue Heeler got to his feet and bounded down the slope ahead, as the two of them once more started off down the narrow dirt trail.

[*]

Samantha led them down out of the rocky hills and back to the road as the sun inched up in the sky. The road carried them west a bit longer, and then began to swing to the north again, cutting through more stony terrain. Gob found it _much_ easier to carry Charon today than it had been yesterday; with the Buffout, Charon felt as if he weighed next to nothing. The chem also seemed to give him more stamina; fatigue and exhaustion did not touch him as they crawled north over the roadway.

Charon lay still and unresponsive in his restraints; there was a laxness to his muscle tone that Gob found disturbing. Looking carefully, he could see that Charon was still breathing—just barely—but his slow, labored respiration seemed to be hanging by a thread. _We have to get him to Vault 87 soon, or else…._ He refused to finish that thought.

The road unrolled before them. Samantha was constantly scanning the horizon, and Dogmeat bounded far ahead of the small group, scouting for any possible threats; Gob knew if there were any dangers out there, one or the other of them would spot them before he did. With nothing to occupy him, his mind drifted back to Megaton, wondering what awaited them on their return. _Simms must surely have come by the saloon now,_ he mused. _I wonder what Nova told him. _ _He_ had nothing to worry about, of course; Samantha had kindly left him no option but to come along with her. _But what did she say about Samantha, I wonder…?_ Somehow he couldn't imagine Nova ratting Samantha out, but he didn't know what she might have said to Simms other than the truth. _Would Simms kick Samantha out for __**that?**_

Gob bit his lip. He had always known Moriarty was a creep—hell, Gob had worked for the guy for fifteen achingly long years. Still, even he had been taken aback by the "deal" Moriarty had offered to Samantha. _Propositioning Samantha while Charon lay dying—__**wow**__. That was just a __**world-class**__ record in assholishness. Even for __**him. **__If she hadn't shot him…_ Dark possibilities thronged at the edges of his thoughts.

_I would have killed him myself._ No, he wouldn't have, Gob knew. It was a pleasant fantasy—that, moved by Moriarty's injustice, he finally would have found the balls to stand up to the bastard for once in his life—but it was just that: a fantasy. The idea of directly challenging Moriarty _still_ made his guts clench, even knowing he was dead.

_Okay, then I would have—I would have—spiked his whiskey with Abraxo or something._ No, he thought with a sigh, he wouldn't have done that either. Most likely what he would have done was—nothing. _Stood there behind the bar and kept my head down while that shitheel took advantage of a terrified and desperate kid._ He muttered a curse under his breath. _Charon was right. God__**damn,**__ you are such a coward, _he thought wearily.

Anyway, it wouldn't have mattered. Nova wouldn't have let that happen, of that he was pretty sure. Moriarty seemed to have a strange sort of respect for Nova; possibly because she was so good at what she did, possibly because she would actually stand up to Moriarty from time to time and call him on some of his shit. _Unlike me._ He shifted the stretcher in his hands, stepping cautiously around a pothole in the middle of the roadway, and wondered what Nova would make of him if she could see him now: T_raversing the Wastes on an adventure, just like Grognaak the Barbarian…._

Except Grognaak hadn't looked like a rotting corpse, he thought with a sigh. Anyway, Nova had gently made it clear to him that she didn't feel that way about him. _As if she ever could, _he thought bitterly._ Forget it. No sense longing after something you can't have._ If only it were that easy. _If only—_

Samantha jerked to a halt so suddenly that Gob missed a step; he tripped and almost dropped Charon again. "What is it?" he asked, catching his balance. A chill went through him. "Is it the—the Hunters?"

"Quick," Samantha said. "Set Charon down—" She glanced around and indicated a place on the road a short distance away, where a couple of concrete barricades and some sandbags placed against a stony ridge made a bit of cover. "Behind there. Hurry."

"What's wrong?" Gob asked as the two of them scrambled to do what she had said. Together they crouched behind the barrier, lowering Charon's stretcher to the broken asphalt of the roadway. Dogmeat bounded to their side, growling again; a ridge of fur was raised along his neck and shoulders. Samantha looked down at her Pip-Boy.

"Enemies," she said succinctly. She got to her feet and peered down the road. "There are four of them, coming this way, down the roadway. They're not Raiders—you don't generally find Raiders too far from their dens. They're not supermutants either or we would have heard them by now. Supermutants aren't good at stealth." She got up on one knee and peeked out over the top of the barricade. Her face was very pale. "The way they're moving—disciplined, all in a line, following the path of the road—it's almost like they're—"

The next moment, the characteristic snap and _zing_ of energy weapons fire rang out, and green fire splashed against the pavement to Gob's left. Gob flung himself backwards on instinct and fell to the pavement. He heard Samantha cry out, "The Enclave!" and scrambled to turn, straining to see where the fire had come from.

Two dark shapes loomed on top of the ridge, their armor glowing with green lightning. _That armor—that's the same as Samantha's, _Gob thought dimly. _Tesla armor— _Their demonic helmets turned them into nightmarish monsters. Both of them were armed with plasma rifles. He heard Samantha swearing frantically, but it was in a distant world. One of them spoke, his voice crackling through his electronic helmet. "_Hands up, Waster. You and your rotten friend. We're taking you into custody by authority of the Enclave. Do not attempt to resist. We have you surrounded. If you take aggressive action, you will be fired upon._"

_Surrounded--?!_ The whining of power armor and the heavy, metallic tread of booted feet came from behind him. Gob jerked around in panic, his heart racing, to see three more Enclave demons moving toward their position. These soldiers were not wearing the glowing green Tesla armor. Instead, the armor was a dullish gray; their helmets, rather than having dragon-like ear attachments, had a snout-like projection; and they were carrying weapons that looked like large rectangular boxes with a nozzle attachment.

"Enclave Hellfire Troopers!" Samantha's voice held the ragged edge of fear. _"Fuck!"_

"Samantha, what do we do?" Gob cried.

Samantha drew a breath. Almost too fast to see, she fired at the two Tesla-armored forms standing on the ridge above them. Her blast struck the first one, and the terrifying demon disintegrated into green goo. Her next shot clipped the shoulder of the second form; the weapon fell from the monster's hand. The Enclave soldier scrambled backward and Samantha fired again, catching him in the center of his chest; the trooper collapsed as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut. Shouts were ringing out from the Hellfire troopers now; they had stopped their advance and were raising their weapons. Samantha whirled on them, interposing herself between the hostile forces and Charon's motionless form, and as she did so, she shouted, "_Run! Gob, run!"_

For a moment, Gob stood there stupidly, staring at her; then he turned and ran. Behind him came a whooshing roar and the burst and crackle of flames; he heard the high _zing_ of Samantha's plasma rifle and her shrill cries of rage, but he didn't stop to look back. He ran, as if all the demons of hell were after him.

[*]

When he finally stumbled to a halt, the sounds of the conflict had died far behind him. He had no idea how long he'd run or how far he'd come; all he knew was that there was a stitch in his side, he was out of breath, and the Buffout was starting to wear off again. He took out the bottle and shook out two more pills, swallowing them absently while looking around and trying to figure out where he was and what to do next. He was standing at the edge of the roadway; the broken pavement dissolved into random chunks scattered haphazardly among blades of brittle, brown grass, which eventually faded into a lane of hard-packed dirt, winding around the base of a gently sloping hill. A splintery, tumbledown wooden fence ran for several dozen yards alongside the dirt lane, and there were a couple blackened, leafless trees beside it. Off in the distance were the remains of a collapsed farmhouse. _This must have been an idyllic spot before the war._

_Did they follow me?_ He shaded his hands with his eyes, straining to see as far down the road as he could, back the way he had come. Heat shimmers danced above the remains of the asphalt. _Is something moving?_ He squinted, but could not make out anything definite. _A mirage…_

_What do I do now?_ He could follow the road back, he supposed, but he had no idea what would be waiting for him if he did. _Samantha—if Samantha—if they—_

He was so consumed in his thoughts and fears that he didn't notice the Enclave soldiers coming around the base of the hill behind him until the plasma rifle pressed into the back of his neck.

"_Hands up, zombie. Now. By order of the Enclave."_

[*]

There were four of them, though they didn't appear to be as high-level as the unit that had surprised him and Samantha earlier: there was only one Tesla-armored soldier, while two more wore simple unadorned Enclave power suits and one was in what looked like an officer's uniform. The Tesla-armored man had a plasma rifle, while the other two armored soldiers had what looked to be laser rifles and the officer carried something that might have been a plasma pistol: Gob was no expert on weaponry, and he didn't get that much of a good look before they blindfolded him anyway. He wanted to burst into tears at his own stupidity and lack of awareness. _How could I not have seen them coming up behind me? Why didn't I __**think**__ to check the area more thoroughly? Haven't I learned __**anything**__ since being caught by those Slavers?_ Maybe Moriarty had been right about him, he agonized; maybe his brains _had_ really rotted into sludge and dripped out his ears by now.

He was terrified they were going to just shoot him out of hand, but they didn't; they blindfolded him instead, and bound his hands behind him with energy cuffs. Then the muzzle of a rifle pressed into his back, forcing him into a lurching walk. He was afraid of the unevenness of the ground, and with his hands behind his back he could not catch himself if he fell, but when he pleaded with the soldiers to at least take the blindfold off so he could see where he was going, his only answer was a blow with a rifle butt. They spoke almost nothing to him, except for curt, one-word orders; when Gob tried speaking to _them_, they hit him, so he shut up.

The powerlessness, the uncertainty, the knowledge that he had no control whatsoever over what was going to happen to him filled Gob with a paralyzing dread. It was exactly like being back in the Slaver caravan again—he seemed to actually _be there_, hearing the cruel, jeering taunts, feeling the blows. The fact that he couldn't see anything made it worse, because he had no visual referents to orient himself. His knees shook and his limbs trembled. A crushing weight filled his chest, and his panicked mind groped frantically for something to hold on to. _Where am I?_ _Am I here—or there?_

The crackling, synthesized tones of an Enclave voice assaulted his ears, and he could have wept for gratitude. _"Doctor Corday ought to be pleased,_" one of them said. _"We managed to find her a test specimen right away. Maybe she'll give us the rest of the day off."_

"_Don't count on it," _the other one laughed, but Gob missed the rest of it. _Test specimen? Is that what they want me for?_ Suddenly he remembered Samantha saying, _The Enclave does very, very bad things to ghouls_, and the fear came rushing back, even worse than before. He would not have thought it was possible.

Charon's words recurred to him: _You are still a slave, and worse, you are a coward. You will be one as long as you are the other._ In his overstressed mind, they rang with the quality of prophecy. Gob _was_ afraid, more than he had ever been in his life, and somehow as he was driven along, blind and uncertain, to a fate that he knew would be more horrible than he had ever imagined, it seemed as if the two were connected: as if his fear had _caused_ his capture.

It seemed like an eternity before he was roughly jerked to a halt and the blindfold was ripped from his eyes. Blinking, he saw that he was at what looked like an Enclave checkpoint, thrown up across the road at the trailer of a wrecked semi. Several prefab polygonal barricades had been erected around the open end of the trailer, outlining a roughly circular space; in the middle of the enclosure were tables, supply crates, and several banks of computer equipment, surrounding a tall, glowing antenna-like thing that looked like a communications tower. A woman in a white lab coat was standing at one of the banks of computer equipment, tapping away on a keyboard; she did not look up as they approached. The Enclave officer addressed himself to her respectfully.

"We found you the test subject you requested, Doctor Corday."

The woman did not look up. "Excellent," she said. "And not a moment too soon; I'm almost ready to begin the next round of experiments. Put it in there with the remains of the others; I'll deal with it in a moment." She nodded toward the trailer without taking her eyes away from the screen.

"Yes, ma'am," the officer said, and gestured toward the soldiers. "You heard the doctor. _Move_."

The two power-armored soldiers grabbed Gob roughly by either arm and dragged him to the open trailer of the semi. He was shoved inside so hard that he stumbled and fell; with his hands bound behind him, he could not catch himself, and he crashed to the metal floor. Behind him was a crackling noise; he twisted and looked back over his shoulder to see a forcefield spring into existence across the opening of the trailer, sealing him in. Slowly he got his feet under him and pushed to a standing position—only to grow cold with horror as his eyes adjusted and he saw what was sharing the trailer with him.

Ghouls. There must have been dozens of them, piled in dismembered chunks at the back of the trailer; his stomach lurched and he averted his face, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. Even so, the image of those piles of body parts was burned on the back of his eyelids. The majority of them were ferals, true, but he had seen at least three or four sentients mixed in among the feral corpses, hacked and mutilated like the rest. Gob began to shiver uncontrollably. His legs gave under him and spilled him to the ground again; he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard, fighting with his gorge. The sharp edge of panic sliced at him. _Oh my god— Oh my god— _

As he huddled on the ground, struggling to control his fear, he dimly heard the voice of the Enclave officer. "Do you have any further orders at this time, ma'am?"

"Yes, actually," Corday replied. "I will require samples of supermutant tissue for the next phase of my research. If you could go out and find me one--?"

"Dead, or alive, ma'am?"

"Either way. The latest scouting reports indicate that there's an encampment about half a klik up the road from here. I've armed the perimeter defenses, so the outpost will be safe while your detachment is gone."

"Yes ma'am," the Enclave officer replied, then more harshly to his men: "_Move out!_"

The tramp of the soldiers' boots faded into the distance. Gob was still shaking. He was almost too frightened to think. All he could do was huddle there, quivering in fear.

_You worthless, pestilent corpse, __**pull yourself together!**_It was Moriarty's voice; somehow, hearing the Irishman's rising, falling tones in his mind helped to clear his head as effectively as a slap. Distantly, Gob mused on how unlikely it would have been that Moriarty would ever have urged him to save Samantha and Charon in real life. _You can't give up now. Samantha and Charon need you. If you let the Enclave kill you here, then Charon will certainly die. You __**have**__ to get out of here. _

_I __**can't**__ get out of here,_ part of him moaned in panic. _There's nothing I can do—I'm trapped, I'm helpless—_

_You will be one as long as you are the other,_ he heard Charon intone again, and he seized onto the words as if they were a lifeline.

_No. I'm not,_ he panted to himself. _I'm not either. Or at least—I don't have to be. I __**don't.**_

Slowly he opened his eyes, keeping his face carefully turned away from the back of the truck; one look at the horrors back there, and he knew he would be reduced again to gibbering fear. Behind his back, he balled his hands into fists, feeling the pain in the blisters from yesterday. Summoning reserves of courage he didn't know he had, he _forced_ the terror back down. _Something. Find something, __**anything. **_Samantha was depending on him. He couldn't just lie down and die.

He swallowed and slowly climbed to his feet again, running his gaze over the encampment. The soldiers were gone; the white, lab-coated scientist –-_Doctor Corday,_ he remembered—was still working quietly at her bank of electronics. His eyes fixed on her, and he drew a breath. _Perhaps—if I appeal to her—if I just __**ask.…**_

He studied her from behind the force field and his heart sank. Corday was no fresh-faced, tender-hearted girl; she was a stern-looking woman in her forties or fifties, with strong, angular features, a severe set to her mouth, and a mass of long, curly blonde hair pinned up in an iron bun at the nape of her neck. The resolute intensity in her face as she tapped the keyboard and stared into the computer screen made his heart quail; he suspected he would have had a better chance of appealing to a block of wood. But there was nothing else for it—he had to try.

He approached near enough to the forcefield that he could feel the electricity tingle along what was left of his skin, and cleared his throat. "D-Doctor Corday?" he began, hearing his voice tremble. "Doctor Corday—"

Doctor Corday did not glance up, or acknowledge his presence in any way.

"Doctor Corday, I—" He swallowed. "My name is Gob. I—" He searched desperately for something else to say. "I'm a sentient ghoul. I—Please, I don't want to die."

No response. Corday continued working without so much as a glance in his direction.

Gob wet his lips. He could feel the fear threatening to overwhelm him and clenched his fists, fighting it back. "I—I know that a lot of smooth—a lot of people have wrong ideas about ghouls. They think that we're all just zombies. And—and yes, that's true to some extent. Most ghouls are ferals, and yes, they _are_ mindless zombies. But not all of us. _I'm_ not a feral. I'm—I'm a person, just like you are, I just—" He bit his lip. "I just look different, that's all. I—Please, Doctor Corday, will you let me go?"

Corday paused in her work, and for one wild moment, Gob thought that he had gotten through to her; but it was just to pick up and peruse a file from a table at her side. Gob cursed internally.

"Can you even hear me?" he tried. "Does this field block sound? _Hey!_" he shouted as loudly as he could. Corday didn't even flinch. _She can't hear me. Great. Just great. What do I do now?_

Gob talked on anyway. Somehow the sound of his own voice in his ears helped him to get a better hold on his fear. He was certain now that he was extremely close to death—he had only to glance back at the pile of ghouls in the back of the truck to see that—and this time, he knew, there would be no Samantha to save him. _It's the end of the line._

It was strange; as he talked, a clarity fell over his thoughts that helped him to calm his emotions and see things in a new light, as if for the last time. He talked about Underworld and Carol: "She's my mother—well, not _really_ my mother, but as close as a ghoul can have to one. She helped me through my change—when it first started happening, I was scared out of my mind, and if it hadn't been for her, I think I really _would_ have gone feral." He felt his mouth twist into a wry smile. "Can you imagine me as a feral? I'd probably be the most pathetic feral ever. I bet even other ghouls would attack me—normally ferals don't, you know; they tend to leave us alone…." He sighed. "I wonder if Carol will even know I'm gone. I guess one of the traders can tell her, if a caravan gets up that way. It'll kill her to find out. She was so worried for me when I left—she kept telling me to be careful, begged me not to go…I guess I should have listened to her," he said with a rueful laugh. "I set off looking for adventure and instead I ended up in Megaton for fifteen years, trapped in Moriarty's dive of a bar. Damn, how I hated that place. If it weren't for Nova, I don't know how I would have made it."

He rambled on as Doctor Corday left the bank of computer equipment and moved over to a set-up of tables containing various pieces of lab equipment. "Nova…I've been—yeah, I guess I've been in love with her from—" He paused, trying to remember. "Well, from the first moment I saw her, just about. You know, I've never actually said it out loud before, though?" he mused. "But it's true. She doesn't feel the same way, of course. Which is okay, you know; I understand," he sighed. "A—a guy like me and a beautiful woman like her—yeah, that could never happen outside of a story. She made me a promise once," he recalled wistfully, "but—yeah. Even I could tell she was only saying it to be nice. Still, that promise helped me through some pretty rough times. I'd—well, I guess I'd do anything for her. I'd die for her if she needed me to. 'Course, now I guess I'm going to die anyway," he said, sighing again. "That's okay too. It hasn't really been much of a life."

He paused for a moment, thinking it over, then gave another wry laugh. "Carol told me once that in the days before the war, when people died they would put up tombstones for them. Big chunks of granite with their names carved on them and a couple of sentences summing up their life. What would they put on mine, I wonder? Nothing much, that's for certain. Maybe that's it: 'Nothing much.' I set out from Underworld on the road to adventure, got captured by Slavers less than a week later, spent fifteen years as slave labor in that wretched little bar of Moriarty's, and then when he _finally_ gets himself killed and I'm free to go, get myself captured _again_ and killed on my second day out of Megaton. Just when things finally seemed to be looking up for me, too. Story of my life, really." He slumped against the cool wall of the trailer with a groan. Corday continued to work at the lab equipment, oblivious.

"You know, the only thing I regret—well, not the_ only_ thing," he admitted, "but one of them—is that I don't know what Samantha's going to do without me. You ought to see her. Well, according to her, you probably have, or some of you have, anyway. You Enclave folk, that is. She's—well, she's everything I wanted to be when I left Underworld. Strong, independent, brave… a hero. Three Dog was even calling her that for a while: 'Hero of the Wastes,' until he came up with something else. And she needed my help—hell, that was why she killed Moriarty and dragged me out of Megaton in the first place, so I could help her friend. He's a ghoul too, you know," Gob added parenthetically, "but another sentient like me. Samantha cares about him so much—she actually wept over him. I'd never seen that before, a smoothskin crying over a ghoul. He was badly injured and she wanted to take him to Vault 87 to be healed—apparently there's a ton of radiation around there, and you know how it heals us. She couldn't get close enough to get him in there without getting fried herself, so she needed me to take him all the way in. Only I'm not going to be there. I don't know what she's going to do. That's what I regret—that they need me and I won't be able to help. I guess Charon's going to die now without me, unless she can think of something else to—"

His breath caught. Doctor Corday had stopped working and was standing completely still. Though her back was to him, there was a set to her shoulders and a tilt to her head that suggested an intense, focused attentiveness. _She was listening._

"You—you can hear me?" he breathed, hardly daring to hope.

Very slowly, Corday turned to face him. Her eyes met his, and he could see that she saw him, truly _saw_ him.

"Go on," she said.

Gob stared at her, straining to read her expression. Her face was closed, revealing nothing. He swallowed, feeling his heart give a wild leap, and he blundered on, not knowing if what he was saying was the right thing. "I—the whole reason I'm out here is to help my friends, Samantha and Charon. Samantha—she's a Vault kid originally, from Vault 101. She's about eighteen or twenty, my height—" Gob was on the short side "—and she has blonde hair and blue eyes. She's very tan. She wears Tesla armor that she—that she—" Gob stuttered, realizing belatedly that perhaps it wasn't a good idea to talk about Samantha killing Enclave troops. "Three Dog talks about her all the time. He calls her 'Little Miss Vault 101' and keeps coming up with all sorts of weird titles for her—I think right now he's calling her the Messiah. Charon is her—well, I guess her employee. He's a ghoul like me. He's really tall though, and his skin is kind of reddish orange—what's left of it, that is. Usually he wears metal armor. He—he follows Samantha around because she bought his contract, and he has to do whatever the person who holds his contract tells him to do. They— Charon was wounded by a Deathclaw a couple of days ago. It almost killed him. Samantha dragged him back to Doc Church in Megaton, but Church told her that there was nothing he could do, and that radiation was Charon's only chance. That's why Samantha killed Moriarty and took me—Samantha wanted me to take him to Vault 87 so the radiation could heal him, and if I'm not there to help them, then he's going to die."

Gob ran out of steam, wondering if he had said enough—or too much. Corday's eyes searched his face intently. Slowly, she took a step away from the table, then another one. Her brows drew together, as if she were trying to puzzle something out.

"How intelligent are you?" she asked slowly.

"Wh-what?"

Her frown deepened. "We were always told that ghouls were mindless. Our instructors said that if a ghoul ever spoke, it was only a—a recording from their previous life, and didn't mean anything more than that. But you don't _sound_ like a recording." She stared at him. "Can—can you _really_ understand me?"

"I can," Gob said desperately. "Ask me anything. I'll show you."

Corday frowned, casting about herself. After a moment, she reached back and pulled a decorative pin from the bun at the back of her head. Holding it up, she told him, "Describe this hairpin."

"It's dark—some dark, shining wood, about as long as my hand," Gob said immediately. "The end is flattened and flared a bit—kind of wavy. It looks almost like a, a leaf or a petal, like a tulip petal, maybe—I've seen pictures of tulips in a small ruined book." He squinted. "There's some kind of a symbol carved on the end but I can't make out what it is from this distance, if—"

"Enough." Corday tucked the pin back into her bun. She drew closer, never taking her eyes off him. The focused concentration on her face intimidated him. "I'm going to tell you a story," she said quietly. "Listen, and see if this sounds familiar to you."

"I'm listening," Gob said. Corday nodded. She took another step nearer.

"A month or two ago, I was stationed at the Red Racer Tricycle Factory—the Enclave has set up a base there, and Colonel Autumn was using it as his headquarters. One day, security brought me a young woman to treat who had taken a plasma rifle bolt to the chest. They didn't tell me who she was—the Enclave is like that; you are told what you need to know and no more—but I heard rumors that they had captured someone whom they'd been after for a long time. The daughter of the founder of Project Purity." She paused, and eyed him.

"Yes," Gob said at once. "That's Samantha. Her father was James. He was killed by the Enclave in the Jefferson Memorial. Samantha was there and saw the whole thing."

Corday nodded. "A day or two later," she resumed, "a ghoul was sent down to me. Tall—"

"Yes."

"Reddish orange skin and hair, what's left of it—"

"_Yes._"

"Carrying a shotgun, and with hands that have been severely burned—"

"_Yes!"_

"I was told that he was a special case, and that Colonel Autumn had a personal interest in him. I had never treated a ghoul before, but I had studied them, and I knew that radiation healed them. So I bandaged his hands with—"

"Radioactive pellets," Gob supplied readily. "Samantha had Charon checked out by Doc Church when they got back to Megaton, and that's what he said. He said that he couldn't have done any better," he added, figuring tossing in a compliment couldn't hurt. Corday simply nodded again.

"I bandaged his hands," Corday continued, "and sent him on his way. Not a day later—" she paused again, and regarded him levelly "—the word came down from the top that Colonel Autumn was 'taking a leave of absence.' I've been in the Enclave long enough to know what that really means, and I know how to keep my ear to the ground. Not only did I hear that he was dead, I heard that his two precious prisoners killed him. Prisoners named Samantha and Charon."

Gob shivered with a sudden chill. Corday did not relent.

"Tell me now, ghoul: Were these your friends? Don't be afraid," she added. "I want the truth. _Now._"

He stared at her, desperately trying to read her face. Her stern visage was inscrutable. Again, the fear clutched at him—fear of giving the wrong answer, and losing his chance at freedom.

_She asked for the truth. Give it to her, why don't you?_ At long last, not knowing if it was the right thing to do, he seized his courage in both hands. _Charon and Samantha are depending on you._ _If there's the slightest chance…_.

"Y-yes. It sounds like it fits. About a month or so ago was when Samantha and Charon came back to town and Charon had injured hands. Samantha mentioned that she'd had a run-in with the Enclave, although she didn't go into details. I don't—" He drew a breath. "I don't know if they killed Autumn, of course," he said hastily. "But the rest of it sounds the same."

The Enclave woman lowered her eyes, considering what he had told her. Gob held his breath, afraid of what her reaction would be. The moment seemed to stretch out to forever….

Then at last, she stepped to the side of the semi truck and touched two controls. The force field fizzled, and then snapped out of existence.

Gob stood stock-still for a moment, unable to believe what had happened. "You're—you're letting me go?" he managed at last.

Corday nodded, standing back. "You're free."

Absurdly, Gob stayed where he was, staring at her. "You're _really_ letting me go?" he asked again, not quite daring to believe it. "But—why?"

Corday's face grew grim. "It's a long story. The short version is—Let's just say that not everyone in the Enclave adored Colonel Autumn and leave it at that." She gestured. This time Gob needed no encouragement; he scurried out of the back of the trailer truck.

"Come here, ghoul." He went to her, and Corday unsnapped the cuffs around his wrists with a touch. As they fell away, he shook his hands, trying to get the blood to circulate again.

"But won't you get in trouble?" he asked her.

Corday shook her head. "When the detachment gets back, I'll just tell them that on closer examination I found that you were unsuitable for my purposes. I outrank them; there's nothing they can say to that." She stepped back and gestured down the road. "Your Vault 87 is that way. Go, ghoul. Help your friends."

"Thank you," Gob said with heartfelt sincerity. "Thank you so much." He lingered a moment, knowing full well he should be running, but not quite able to leave it at that. "What—if you don't mind my asking, what's your first name? You know," he added shyly, "in case we ever see each other again."

Corday regarded him for a moment longer, then smiled. A rare light came into her face, softening and transforming her severe features into real beauty. "It's Elizabeth. Elizabeth Corday. And you're Gob, right?" He nodded. "Goodbye, Gob," she said, still smiling. "And—good luck with your girl Nova. I hope it works out."

"It won't," Gob said glumly. "She basically told me in so many words that I had no chance with her. She said it in a nice way, but it still hurt. Luck won't help when you look like I do." He shrugged. "But thanks anyway."

"Well," Corday said, and a trace of warmth filled her eyes now, "all I can say is, if she passes on you, then she's a fool. Because from what you said, I could tell that she will never find anyone who loves her more." Gob shifted in embarrassment. "Go safely, Gob."

This time, he didn't wait to be told twice. But as he started off down the road, he looked back over his shoulder. Elizabeth Corday was standing in the middle of the road, watching him go, and as he watched, she raised one hand in farewell.


	6. Chapter 6

Gob hurried down the road in the direction Corday had indicated, moving as quickly as he dared. He was not running blindly; he had learned from his previous experience and took care to stop and scan the landscape as he moved, searching for warning signs, looking for likely sites for ambushes, or any other sort of threat. He knew his only chance was to see and avoid any danger before it reached him; he was unarmed and had no way of defending himself if trouble _did _strike.

It was not easy to stop and force himself to take precautions; his heart was hammering at him to hurry, _hurry!_ The sun had begun its ascent up the sky and the edge of heat was beginning to creep into the day. He was well aware that every moment it took him to find Samantha again might be one more moment that Charon did not have. That, after dispatching the Enclave forces, Samantha would continue her quest to bring Charon to Vault 87, Gob did not doubt for an instant; with or without him, this Vault 87 was Charon's only hope. Thus, it would be there that he would find them. That Samantha might not have defeated the Enclave troopers after all was a possibility that Gob resolutely refused to let himself consider.

He had been on the road for perhaps an hour, and the terrain around him had been getting rockier and rockier again, until he reached a ridge of stone towering above his head. The road passed right through a cut in the hill, and there was a rusted, chain-link fence with a gate stretching right across it. A small, rectangular concrete building was on the left-hand side of the road, and he could see a similar building on the right, on the other side of the gate. What caught his attention most, though, was that as he drew near to the chain-link fence, he sensed the unmistakable tingling warmth of radiation.

The rads surrounded him, sinking into his sore muscles, soothing away his aches like a long soak in a hot bath. A not-unpleasant itching began in his wounded hands, and he guessed that his blisters from the day before were healing as well. Almost despite himself, Gob drew nearer, entranced; the only time he'd felt radiation like this was near the bomb at the center of Megaton. _Is this Vault 87?_ He'd never seen a Vault up close before, and had no idea what one might look like. _Have I finally made it at last? But if it __**is**__, then where's Samantha? Did she—_

The crack and _zinggg!_ of a bullet zipping by his head broke his train of thought cleanly off. _Not again—Enclave, Raiders—_ He cursed savagely, flinging himself aside. _I __**need**__ to find Samantha!_

"Halt! Who goes there?"

At the sound of the voice, he relaxed. It was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time; he did not know the speaker, but its raspy, bottle-brush texture exactly matched his own. He held up his hands and in his most grating voice, he called back, "I'm unarmed!"

There was some shuffling, and slowly, four ghouls began to emerge from concealment among the rocky ridge. They were all male, and all armed, though mostly with melee weapons; there was one who had a hunting rifle, and Gob guessed it was he who had issued the challenge. He stepped forward now, peering closely at Gob.

"You're—a ghoul?" the man rasped. He put up the rifle, raising a hand to the rest of the group. "Christ, I'm sorry—I thought you were one of those Raider or Slaver bastards." The man scrambled down through the boulders and unlatched the gate. "Come in, come in, by all means."

[*]

The four ghouls introduced themselves in a flurry of names; Gob made out Abe, George, Thomas, and Benjamin. "What is this place?" he ventured once the introductions were past. "Is this Vault 87?"

"Vault _where?_" Abe, the one with the hunting rifle, asked in confusion. He seemed to be the leader. "Nah, this is the Jalbert Brothers Waste Disposal. I guess they were a prewar cleanup team that dealt with radioactive waste—as you can see from the grounds."

He waved one hand at the cut in the ridge behind him. Over his shoulder, Gob could see that the ground was covered with heaps of old, rusting barrels, surrounded by green, glowing flecks of radioactive particles. He muttered a curse, not sure whether to be upset or relieved—upset that this was not Vault 87 and he still had some undefined distance to go, or relieved that he hadn't reached the Vault to find Samantha absent.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Abe curiously.

"What's it look like?" Abe snorted. "Setting up camp, of course."

"Originally we were trying to get to Underworld," Thomas volunteered, "but when we got to the DC outskirts there were too many super-mutants around. We couldn't go any farther."

Gob frowned. His experience with super-mutants had been very limited, but he had heard Quinn and Willow talk about them back at Underworld. "I thought super-mutants generally wouldn't attack us."

"They don't _capture_ us, like they do the smoothskins," Ben corrected him. "I think it's because whatever they're trying to do to the smoothies doesn't work on us. But if you go poking around in places they've claimed as their own, they'll shoot you dead just as fast."

"Oh." Gob nodded in understanding.

It was strange; he'd been living among smoothskins for so long that he'd almost forgotten what it was like to be surrounded by his own kind. There was a subtle tension that had been there all the years he'd spent in Megaton—a habitual flinch, a sort of reflexive cringe, buried so deep that he scarcely even realized it was there; now, among ghouls once again, it fell away. It was as if a knot deeply buried somewhere inside him gently loosened. He felt himself relax in ways he hadn't even realized he'd been tense. The ever-present sensation of himself as repulsive, sickening, hideous was gone; the rest of the ghouls looked no better than he did. Among his own kind, he did not have to fear cruel words or heavy-handed blows because of his appearance.

_Well, it was mostly Moriarty doing the hitting,_ he recalled. His mouth twisted. Though Jericho could be heavy-handed too, when he had had a few and was in the right—_or wrong_—mood; and the various Wasters who wandered in and out of town would often give him a clout or two as well. _And that bastard Moriarty never did a thing to stop them, either._ His jaw tightened with remembered bitterness.

Abe was continuing on. "Anyway, we gave up on trying to get into Underworld and came back out here to figure out what to do next. We heard that this ghoul named Roy Phillips had managed to get Alistair Tenpenny to let him into Tenpenny Tower, so we thought we'd try there, but when we got there the gates were locked and there didn't seem to be anyone home—"

"Yeah," Gob agreed. "We—my friend and I—passed it on our way out here and it looked deserted." He shivered again at the memory of the darkened tower silhouetted against the night sky.

"George suggested this place," Abe went on, "so we decided to come out here and take a look." He waved one hand. "So far it's been just about perfect. The buildings give us shelter and the rads keep the smoothies away. The only problem is there's a settlement of ferals to the north a bit, but you know, the ferals leave us alone, and they also help to keep the smoothies out, so it's all good."

"Are you thinking about—about what, _settling_ here?" Gob asked in wonder.

"Sure." Ben shrugged. "It's got everything. Defensible location, plenty of rads—if we can get a caravan stop, we're golden. We can be the Underworld of the Western Wastes. Sure, it's not that big, but there's not that many of us, and hell, we can always expand." He paused then and eyed Gob. "There's room for one more, if you'd like to join."

Gob drew a breath, surprised for a moment by the ghost of longing. It wasn't just the radiation; there was something soothing about being among other ghouls, something that eased the aches caused by his time among smoothskins. For a moment he was tempted….

_But then there's Samantha and Charon._

"I can't," he told them regretfully. "There's something I have to do. I'm helping some friends, and we got separated. Maybe you've seen them? One's a ghoul—tall, reddish skin, badly injured—he'd be lying in a stretcher, most likely, or else the other one would be carrying him. She's a smoothskin—"

Gob broke off as he saw their faces tighten. The four of them glanced, one to the other. "You're helping a _smoothskin?_" Ben said in a carefully neutral voice.

"Well—yeah," Gob said, taken aback.

"What, did she enslave you or something?"

"N—no. Not this one. She's my friend—" he tried.

"Your friend?" Abe looked puzzled. "You _really_ think a smoothie bastard gives a damn about any of us?"

Gob bit his lip. "This one's different," he floundered weakly. "S—Samantha cares, she really does. I saw her cry over Charon—her ghoul friend. She needs me and I--"

"Your friend is _Samantha?_" Abe asked suddenly. "You mean the one Three Dog calls the Messiah?" At Gob's nod, the hostility cleared from their faces. "We _know _her!"

"We ran into her a couple of times in the Wastes," Thomas said, "her and her dog. She traveled with us for a bit and helped us fight off some Talon Company mercs. She was polite to us," he said, almost wonderingly. "Not too common among smoothies, that's for sure."

"Have you seen her?" Gob asked eagerly. "Did she come this way?" As the four of them looked at each other uncertainly, Gob repeated, "Like I said, she would have been with an injured ghoul—and she would have been wearing Enclave armor," he thought to mention suddenly.

Again, the ghouls exchanged glances. "Oh," said Abe quietly. "Wish we'd known that earlier."

Gob felt the remains of the skin on his face pale. "Why?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

"Oh—nothing like that," Abe hastened to reassure him. "It's just that, an hour or so ago, we saw an Enclave trooper approach the gates." He waved toward the chain-link gates now standing open. "They were dragging a ghoul with them. We didn't know what they were doing or where they were going, and we didn't stop to ask—"

"Yeah," Thomas rasped. "Believe me, we all know how the Enclave treats ghouls."

"I fired a couple of warning shots from the lookout point," Abe continued, reaching back and touching the stock of his hunting rifle, "and they backed off. You know, even at the time I thought the trooper gave up too easy for an Enclave soldier," he added, frowning. "Damn, I didn't know it was _Samantha._" He bit his lip.

Gob muttered a curse. _So close…_ "You say that was an hour ago?"

"Possibly more," Ben offered. _Dammit,_ Gob thought.

"I've got to go after her. She needs me." He frowned. "Can you give me any idea of where she might have gone from here?"

"Where did you say she was going again?"

"Vault 87," he said hopefully, his eyes hanging on them. The four ghouls looked at each other and then shook their heads.

"Never heard of it," Abe said, shrugging. "But if she was following this road trying to get there—well, a bit north of the site, the road curves to the west. There's another branch that forks to the west a couple miles back down the road—" Gob nodded; he had passed it on the way in. "It's possible she went back and turned down the side branch."

"Okay." Gob clenched his fists. Samantha's need gnawed at him, like a goad driving him onward. He was suddenly filled with the urge to grab the other ghoul and try to _shake_ more definite information out of him, but restrained himself; it wouldn't help. _She __**might**__ have turned down the side branch? And what if she didn't? How will I know? How will I find her--?_ He shook off the questions. "Well, then I need to get going. If I hurry maybe I can still catch her."

As he turned to go, Abe called after him, "You _sure _you have to go? Offer's still open—you can join us here if you want. Samantha's a tough girl—whatever's wrong, I'm sure she can take care of it by herself." As Gob glanced back over his shoulder, Abe added, "You have the look of someone who's been living among the smoothies for a long time. It might be nice to stay with your own people for a while."

Again, Gob felt the pull of temptation. It had been so long since he had been among ghouls…since he had truly been able to relax like he was now. For a fleeting moment he actually half-entertained the notion—then firmly rejected it.

_Charon's__** life**__ is depending on me._ He had seen how weak Charon was this morning; he knew that without him, Charon would not survive. _Saving his life is more important than me actually feeling good about myself for once._

"I can't," he told them. "It's not just Samantha, it's the ghoul too. They need me. I _have_ to go and help them."

"Well, we're sorry to see you go," Abe said, shrugging, "and if you change your mind, you know where to find us."

_Actually I __**don't**__, _Gob thought; Samantha had the Pip-Boy 3000, not him, and he would not have bet caps on his ability to find this place again. But it didn't matter. He had directions to where Samantha had gone, and that was the important thing. With a final wave of his hand to the ghouls, he started off.

[*]

The turnoff was just where the other ghouls had said it was, about a mile and a half or so back in the direction he had come. Gob paused at the junction to peer down the road as far as he could see, looking for a power-armored form accompanying an injured ghoul, but saw nothing. _Dammit,_ he thought to himself. Still, this was his only hope.

The road began to rise as he followed it, and the blackened spires of trees began to fill in the rocky terrain on either side of it; first just ones and twos, but then a whole forest of them, shooting up between the boulders and crags, and lining either side of the road. Their branches were leafless and bare, but there were still enough of them to give the ground some semblance of shade. _This place must have been gorgeous in the days before the war, _he thought. The roadway was in fairly good condition still; even after two hundred years, it was still fairly level. As he climbed higher into the hills, he could see the Capital Wasteland spread out around him, slightly hazy in the dusty air. It was possible, if he tried hard enough, to imagine that the dim hills he could see off in the distance were covered with the green of vegetation.

After a while, he began to see patches of whitish soil scattered among the rocks, glowing faintly under the morning sun. _Radioactive?_ he thought, but when he drew near and touched one, he did not detect the tingling sensation of radiation. _Strange…._

He came upon Samantha a few minutes later. To one side of the road up ahead was a clearing among the rocks and trees. Several rusting, abandoned trailers and destroyed cars were drawn up in a rough circle around a fire pit in the middle, and beyond the ring were scattered some picnic tables and what might have been outdoor grills. A figure in Enclave power armor was standing in the middle of the clearing, its back to him. The figure's head was bowed, and one hand was pressed to its helmet. At its feet lay a stretcher with an immobile form strapped to it; Gob could see just enough to recognize it was Charon. The armor worn by the figure was not the green, glowing Tesla armor Samantha had had on when he had last seen her: it was the dull gray armor of the ones that Samantha had called Hellfire troopers. For a moment, Gob's heart quailed; but then he heard a bark, and Dogmeat came bounding toward him out of the trees across the road, head up and tail wagging. The Blue Heeler reared up and planted two muddy paws on Gob's chest, squirming with happiness and struggling to lick Gob's face. Gob pushed him down with difficulty.

"Down, boy, down," he ordered, somewhat overwhelmed by the exuberant greeting.

The Enclave trooper turned toward him with alacrity. _"Gob?!"_ he heard his own name crackle in synthesized tones; then the trooper ripped off the helmet, revealing that she was, indeed Samantha. The joyous surprise on her face was unmistakable. "Oh my God—_Gob—_" she cried in a shaky voice, then came toward him and flung her arms around him. The metal surface of her armor pressed into him. The armored strength of her embrace was a little frightening and he struggled to push her away.

"Samantha—easy—" he choked.

Samantha released him at once and stepped back. She was crying, and her hands fluttered at her sides. "Oh my God, Gob," she repeated, her voice trembling. "I—I thought that you were—I thought the Enclave—and I didn't know what—" She broke off and covered her eyes with one hand.

"Hey, didn't I tell you that we ghouls were tough?" he replied, offering her a wry smile. "The Enclave couldn't keep me down. Not for long, anyway," he added.

"Thank God," Samantha said, wiping at her eyes. "Thank God. I didn't know what I was going to do without you." She drew a breath, and again, that distant look returned to her face as she shoved the emotion back down inside herself. "But I can stop worrying. You're here now, after all."

"How's—" Gob nodded toward Charon. The other ghoul lay unnaturally still in the restraints. Gob swallowed a bit as the distance in Samantha's eyes strengthened.

"He's…still alive," she said quietly. "I just tested with my armor—" She gestured toward the shining metal surface of her vambraces "—and he's breathing…but just barely. I—" She faltered for a moment; then her stern mien reasserted itself. "I don't know how he's still hanging on, but he is. But we _have_ to get him to Vault 87 as soon as possible. He may not even have an hour left."

"Then let's go." Gob knelt between the handles of the stretcher, pausing to look down at Charon. The ghoul's eyes were closed. His fingers were open and empty; the gun he had carried earlier was gone. Gob suppressed a chill. "How far away are we?"

"Not far at all," Samantha replied as she too knelt at the head of the stretcher. "Now that you're back, we should be able to make it in no time." She turned to look down at Charon. "You hear that, Charon?" she asked his somnolent form. "We're almost there. I—I _order_ you to stay alive, you hear me? Your employer _forbids_ you to give up now."

"Does ordering him to stay alive help?" Gob couldn't help asking. Samantha gave a shaky smile.

"I don't know," she confessed. "But I don't think it can possibly hurt, and it makes me feel better, anyway." She curled her hands around the stretcher's handles, and on a three-count they lifted Charon. "Let's go."

[*]

Samantha had been telling the truth when she had said they were close to the Vault; it could not have been more than half an hour before she called a halt. They had reached the edge of the forest, where the treeline ended and the rocks began again; Samantha bent to set down Charon, and then gestured out. "There's the Vault."

Gob looked out from the shelter of the trunks. Across a stony field, he could see a jumbled mass of boulders, rocks, and jagged outcroppings, utterly devoid of vegetation. A strange sort of fence ran along the base of the stony pile: it appeared to be made of torn-up girders along which rusted strands of barbed wire were strung. He studied the feature, shading his eyes with one hand, then frowned.

"Samantha, there's something moving—"

"It's super-mutants." Startled, he turned to look at her. She was gazing out across the field and did not spare him a glance. The distant stranger was back in her eyes. "This is where they come from. The scientists in this Vault were working on exposing test subjects to something called the Forced Evolutionary Virus, or FEV. They were trying to create super-soldiers. Instead, they ended up making—" She waved toward the Vault. "That's why the super-mutants are always trying to capture us: so they can expose us to FEV and make more of their own kind."

"Oh." Gob bit his lip. "Samantha, I can't take Charon into there if there are—"

He broke off. Samantha was already pulling out and assembling her sniper rifle. "Wish I'd kept one of those Heavy Incinerators," she muttered, "but with Charon it would have been too much weight. You stay here," she said, turning to Gob. "I'll snipe them from a distance. After I've dropped them all, you go in. You'll be pulling Charon travois-style: hold the handles of the stretcher at one end and let the ends of the other set of handles drag on the ground. The radiation is highest right around the Vault door, so get as close to that as you can. I've sighted the Vault door before on my sniper scope; it shouldn't be that long a walk, perhaps fifteen minutes to half an hour. Just follow the increasing rads; they should lead you right to it. Do you need my Geiger Counter?" She put one hand on her Pip-Boy 3000.

"No." Gob shook his head. "Ghouls can sense radiation—I'll be able to tell by feel." He looked out from the treeline, back at the tiny green dots moving among the rocks, and drew a breath. "Wh—What if you don't get all the super-mutants?" he ventured.

"Then you'll have to deal with any remaining ones by yourself. Can you do that?" She regarded him.

He swallowed. "Samantha, I—I don't know."

"You'll have to." Her face looked stern and alien in the filtered sunlight; the distance had surrounded her, engulfed her. Gob shivered, feeling as if he were standing next to someone who was a total unknown to him. "Once you go beyond the fence, I won't be able to help you. The rads will be too high for me to come to your aid. I'll watch from out here and continue to pick off any super-mutants I see, but in there you'll be on your own. I'm sorry, Gob. I would never ask you to do this normally, but it's Charon's only chance."

"Oh." Gob clenched and unclenched his fists nervously. The expression in Samantha's eyes was not reassuring in the slightest; he turned his gaze back to the stony bulwarks, finding them marginally more comforting than his companion. Cold fear nestled in the pit of his stomach. The brief, cowardly idea of running away surfaced in his mind, but as he glanced back at the stranger standing beside him, it withered just as quickly. Samantha looked just as she had before she had shot Moriarty. If he tried to run now….

_Besides, there's Charon._ His eyes dropped to the other ghoul, lying on the stretcher at his feet. In that moment, as he gazed down at Charon, he realized Samantha didn't matter. Even if she died, he would still go on—he would _have_ to go on. _For Charon's sake. I'm his only chance,_ he thought, and somehow only then realized it was absolutely true. He drew a breath, then braced his shoulders as if to assume a heavy load.

"Don't worry about me, Samantha. I'll be fine."

Samantha smiled, and that coldness in her eyes melted a bit. He guessed that she knew what he had been thinking. "Thank you, Gob," she said with quiet sincerity. "Here." She handed him two bottles. "Purified water. Give—Give some to him as soon as he wakes up."

"I will." Gob bent to lay them on the stretcher beside the other ghoul.

"And here." Samantha held out her hand and passed him the Blackhawk. "If you aim it just right, this can kill even a supermutant with a single shot. It's why I gave it to you in the first place."

Gob stared at it. _Keep your hands off weapons,_ echoed in his mind, in Charon's raspy tones. He returned the pistol to the holster at his side without comment.

"One more thing." Samantha held out what appeared to be a sphere of shining black. Gob took it from her, turning it over and examining it curiously.

"An 8-ball?"

"It's my lucky 8-ball," she clarified. A tinge of pink came into her cheeks, and she averted her eyes. "It was given to me by someone in Bigtown. I don't know…it seems to work for me, and I figured you might appreciate a little extra luck. If you don't want it that's fine—" she hastened to add, "but I just thought—"

"No, no, it's okay." Gob took the 8-ball from her, despite the circumstances both amused and touched by Samantha's diffidence. Suddenly he was struck by the fact that she was almost certainly _much_ younger than he was; strange as it might seem, it hadn't occurred to him before. He felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. "A little more luck never hurt anyone."

"Yeah—that's what I thought too." She drew a breath, and returned her gaze to the stony field. The distance settled around her once again. "Dogmeat! Stay!" She gestured to the Blue Heeler, who immediately sat down, his tail curled neatly around his hindquarters. He did not bark, but looked at her with bright eyes. "Gob, you move on my signal. Till then, wait here." She hesitated a moment, shouldering her sniper rifle, then darted out from among the trees.

It was amazing how swiftly and silently she could move in powered armor, Gob thought, observing her. Within moments, she had settled behind a large boulder halfway across the field. The super-mutants did not appear to have noticed her advance. Slowly, she raised her sniper rifle, peering out cautiously from behind the rock. She sighted down the scope, and there was a short, sharp _crack!_ One of the green dots dropped. The rifle cracked out again and again, and two more of the tiny specks fell. Then there was a long pause. Samantha rested so still behind the rock that she seemed to have become part of the stone, gazing patiently down her rifle. Suddenly there were two more shots, followed shortly by another. Samantha paused, scanning the rocks intently through her sniper rifle scope, then gestured sharply to Gob. _Go!_

Gob drew a breath. He braced himself, tightened his grip on the handles of Charon's stretcher, and started out from the shelter of trees, crossing the field on to Vault 87.


	7. Chapter 7

Gob sensed the rads almost the moment he stepped past the wire fence. It started as a low-level tingling, like what he had experienced at the Jalbert Brothers site; but as he pulled Charon further among the rocky, lifeless bluffs, he could feel it increasing almost literally step by step. After he had gone perhaps a dozen paces, the faint tingle had grown to a sense of surging strength and vigor, a thrilling exhilaration that grew stronger by the second. The aches he had gained over the past day and a half of helping to carry Charon had completely disappeared. He felt all-powerful, invincible—almost as if he could simply scoop the other ghoul up in his arms and bound his way over the boulders to the entrance of Vault 87.

_Christ,_ he thought as he maneuvered Charon's stretcher around a granite outcropping; the weight of the other ghoul seemed as light and trivial as that of a feather. _No wonder Samantha didn't dare come in here by herself. The rad count must be astronomical._ He had never in his life experienced anything like the sense of limitless strength that filled him now. The sensation was emboldening, intoxicating. He wanted to throw his head back and laugh aloud. _This is better than chems._

Samantha had been right; the Vault door was not that far from the barrier around the area. Trails of packed dirt—probably made by the supermutants—criss-crossed the area; Gob followed one of these up to the lip of a cliff. As he reached the top and looked over the edge, he found that he was looking into a sort of bowl, surrounded on three sides by stone bulwarks but with a dirt floor. Embedded in one of the stone walls, on the opposite side of the bowl from him, was a ramshackle wooden door that looked almost like an ancient screen door; he knew from hearing Samantha describe her adventures in leaving Vault 101 that it was the outer door to the Vault's entrance.

_That's it. That's the place._ Strong as the rads were around him, he could feel that they were still increasing. He glanced back at Charon, where he lay on the stretcher. The other ghoul was already starting to look healthier; some tone had come back into his muscles, and his breathing was strengthening. _Not too late yet, _Gob thought, exulting. Nevertheless, it would be best to take no chances; the best place for him would be at the very heart of the radiation. _Right in front of the door._

He set Charon's stretcher down for a brief moment to unwind the bandages around his hands, and was elated to see that the oozing blisters were completely gone as if they had never been; the raddled, patchwork flesh of his hands looked the same as it always had. _This is incredible. Forget Underworld, why the hell isn't there a colony of ghouls living __**here?**__ Supermutants?_ The way Gob felt now, the idea that super-mutants might pose any sort of threat to him seemed ludicrous. _We'd tear them apart—_

His thoughts broke off as he felt the ground tremble beneath him.

_What the—_ He lost his footing briefly, then caught himself. _Earthquake? _was his first thought. _But we've never had an earthquake in the Wastes…._ He glanced around in confusion. The shaking continued, regular and rhythmic, growing stronger with each repetition. Slowly, a darkness slid over him, as though a cloud was blotting out the sun. Startled, Gob turned to look behind him as the shaking came to a halt.

Standing perhaps a dozen yards away, towering up against the sky, was a Super-Mutant Behemoth.

Gob had never seen one before, but he had heard them described by Samantha and others; he knew immediately what he was looking at. The green-skinned creature behind him was easily twenty feet tall or more, and its enormous frame was so heavily muscled it appeared grotesque. Its face was hideous and misshapen, a horrible parody of human features. In one hand, it carried a club made out of a massive fire hydrant and an attached section of pipe that appeared to have been simply ripped whole out of the ground; a car door strapped to its other arm served as a shield. Its thick, hideous neck was festooned with a necklace of human skulls, and more skulls hung attached to the crude loincloth that girded its hips. An arrangement of two shopping carts bound together to make a crude basket was strapped to its back; within were the rattling remains of decaying human corpses. It stood there for a moment, then raised its fire hydrant club with a bellow. It brandished the club against the sky and bellowed again, and Gob could just barely make out the vestiges of words within the mass of noise.

"_Rotten man!"_ it roared. _"Rotten man go squish!_" It roared again, swinging its club at the ground, and the earth beneath him shook. Showers of dirt sifted down from the edge of the cliff, to spatter on the ground far below.

Gob gazed up at the behemoth. The radiation danced along his blood and buzzed in his brain. He felt no fear, despite the size of the thing; just a drilling, heady excitement. The stretcher was at his back, yet he dared not glance at it. His hand slid down his side to the holster at his hip; he touched the smooth stock of the gun briefly…

_Keep your hands off weapons, _Charon's voice rasped in his mind, and Gob released the gun. Samantha had said the .44 magnum Blackhawk could kill a super-mutant in one shot; she had said nothing about a super-mutant behemoth. All he was like to do by shooting that thing was make it angry.

_So what else can I do?_

He drew a breath. "Hey, ugly!" he shouted up at the super-mutant, his grating tones harsh in his own ears. "I'll bet you can't catch me!"

The behemoth roared and shook his club. Gob took off running, roughly parallel to the cliff—he dared not go forward, because that would be right past the monster. He could hear the mutant lumbering behind him, and turned to shout back, "You're as slow as you are stupid!" The behemoth howled again. The ground shook with his heavy strides. Gob's own feet seemed to fly over the packed dirt; for long stretches it felt as if his feet did not even touch the earth. The air behind him whistled as the behemoth swung his fire-hydrant club, barely missing him; Gob felt the wind of its passage stir his clothing. Suddenly a wall of rock loomed before him and Gob skidded to a stop, whirling to face his pursuer. The behemoth charged, but Gob dodged at the last moment and the behemoth staggered to a halt.

"_Rotten man run fast!_" it roared, glowering down at him. _"Rotten man scared?_"

Gob stared up at the behemoth. He was still not afraid in the slightest, curiously enough, though he recognized how dangerous the situation was. The rads bubbled in his brain. He tilted his head. "Should I be?" he asked.

The behemoth bellowed again. Its rage echoed off the stone walls and canyons, filling the air for miles. Gob suspected Samantha must have heard it, and wondered distantly what she thought.

"_Rotten man weak—__**puny!**__ Me strong! Me eat your __**bones,**__ rotten man!"_

It roared and beat its club on the ground and howled so that boulders came crashing down from the wall behind him; a rock the size of a small car struck the ground three feet to the left of Gob. Gob didn't bother to flinch.

"You are very strong," he said, looking up at the behemoth. "Much stronger than I am. I'm sure if you wanted to, you could kill me very easily." He shoved his hands into his pockets. His right hand closed on something smooth and round. _Samantha's lucky 8-ball, _he realized. He turned it over in his hand.

"_Kill AND EAT, rotten man!"_

Gob's fingers worked on the 8-ball, turning it and turning it. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea. Ghouls—rotten men like me—aren't all that good to eat. We tend to give people indigestion. Are you sure you're strong enough to eat me?"

The behemoth howled. _"Me strongest ever!_"

"Well, I can't let you eat me until I know you're strong enough to handle it. I need you to show me how strong you are." As the behemoth stared at him in confusion, Gob nodded to where a blackened, shattered tree still clung to the edge of the cliff. Its trunk was gnarled and ruined. "Are you strong enough to pick up that tree?"

"_More than strong enough, rotten man!" _The behemoth set down its club and bounded to the tree. Wrapping its hands around the trunk, it ripped the tree out of the ground with a prodigious heave, its huge muscles flexing. Roaring in triumph, it threw the tree trunk across the chasm, so that it crashed into the wall on the other side. _"Strong enough for you?"_

"That certainly is strong," Gob agreed_ ._ "But I bet you're not strong enough to lift, say, that boulder next to it." He pointed to a huge boulder standing next to the crater in the ground where the tree had been; it was roughly the size of Samantha's Megaton house.

"_Me strong!_" the behemoth roared. It wrapped its arms around the boulder, struggling to lift it. Sweat glistened on its rubbery green skin. For a long moment nothing happened, then with a groan, the rock began to move. The behemoth raised the huge boulder over its head, raging, and flung it down into the chasm as well. It smashed into the dirt floor far below, so hard that a cloud of dust billowed up in its wake all the way to the level where Gob and the super-mutant were standing. _"Strong now, rotten man?!_"

"I'm impressed," Gob admitted. "I don't think I've ever _seen_ anyone as strong as you are. I wonder if you're strong enough to—" He paused, then shook his head. "Never mind."

"_Never mind? What 'never mind?'"_ The behemoth focused its uneven yellow eyes on him sharply.

"Forget it. Nobody's _that_ strong," Gob demurred, waving one hand. His other hand tightened on the 8-ball in his pocket.

The behemoth. _"What strong? How strong? You tell me now, rotten man!"_

Gob paused, as if thinking it over, then said slowly, "I bet you're not strong enough to lift yourself."

"_Lift self? What you talk about, rotten man!?"_

"Well," said Gob, gazing up at the creature's hideously distorted face, "you know they say that not even the strongest man in the world is strong enough to lift himself. If you could do that, it would certainly mean that you were the strongest one ever. But," he said, sighing in regret, "I don't think even _you're_ that strong. I guess you'd better just go ahead and eat me now."

The behemoth roared in rage, and the echoes of its howls rolled like thunder. _"You wrong, rotten man! Me strongest ever! You watch--me show you!_" It ripped the car-door shield off its arm and threw it aside, then stared down at its body, its deformed features contorting into a dim frown.

Gob watched with interest. First, the supermutant wrapped its arms around its torso. Its shoulders flexed with effort, but that didn't seem to work. It took a step back, its frown deepening. Next it tried grabbing itself by the upper arms and pulling, but it had no better luck that way. It wrapped its hands around its neck just under its head, and tried pulling up, but again, nothing happened. The creature threw its head back and howled in frustration.

"You know, never mind," Gob called out to him. "I didn't really think you could do it in the first place. Why don't you just forget it. You can just eat me right now, if you like."

"_You be quiet, rotten man!_" the behemoth raged at him. _"Me show you!_" It took another step back and stared down at itself again. One heel ground on the edge of the cliff, and a small shower of stones cascaded down. Gob watched. His fingers curled around Samantha's lucky 8-ball.

The behemoth put its hands on its sides, then on its thighs. It ran its hands down its left leg. After feeling around its foot for a moment, it picked its appendage up in its hands. The behemoth staggered, thrown off-balance, and hopped on its right foot, striving to steady itself. Again, its foot ground right on the cliff's rocky lip.

_Now._ "Maybe this will help. Here!" Gob shouted, and threw Samantha's 8-ball.

It was a long shot—normally, Gob knew, he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if he were inside it—but perhaps there was something to that luck business after all; the 8-ball flew true, straight for the behemoth's head. With a roar of surprise, the already-off-balance behemoth jerked away, and its heel slipped over the edge. It tottered for a split-second, waving its arms, and then with a scream of sheer rage it went plunging over the side. A moment or so later there was a tremendous, ground-shaking _thud_, and the monster's cry stopped abruptly.

Slowly, Gob made his way to the edge of the cliff, stopping to retrieve the 8-ball, which lay dark and shining on the ground next to the drop-off. The behemoth lay on the ground, sprawled in an unnatural position; its skull had struck a sharp rock, and there was a profound dent in the side of its head. Its yellow eyes stared upward, sightless

_It's dead,_ he thought, staring down at it. His foot dislodged a shower of stones that went bouncing and rattling down over the cliff face, to spatter on the ground next to the creature's head. _The first thing I ever killed_. Looking down at the remains of the monstrous creature, he could scarcely believe it. He hadn't really thought that trick with the 8-ball would work; it was just the only thing he could think of to try. _It's really, actually dead…_

The drilling elation of the rads surged in him, and he shot one fist skyward with a cry, loud enough to echo back starkly from the canyon walls. He'd done it. He, Gob, had brought down a behemoth all by himself. _Me, Moriarty's tavern slave…_

But Moriarty was dead, Gob remembered. _As dead as the behemoth down there._ And he was a slave no longer.

Tucking the 8-ball away, he turned and made his way back to Charon.

[*]

Even in the short amount of time Gob had been occupied with the behemoth, Charon appeared to have grown visibly stronger; his breathing was deeper and more even, and he tossed a bit in his restraints, murmuring muddy syllables that might or might not have been English. Gob knelt and checked him to be sure that the straps were still secure—he didn't want Charon rolling off the stretcher while he was dragging him down the cliff face. Then he lifted the end of the stretcher, and started down into the bowl of earth below.

As he drew near to the rickety wooden door that led to the entrance of Vault 87, he saw bodies lying at the base of it: three or four skeletons, a yellow-rad-suited form, a couple of packets of Rad-Away, and two suitcases, one of which held a .32 pistol. _They must have tried to get into the Vault after the bombs fell,_ he realized. The thrilling energy of the rads was almost unbearable. _This is the place._

The sprawled corpse of the behemoth lay at the far end of the bowl, a green bulk in the shadows; Gob kept his distance from it, just to be safe, though he was sure the creature was dead. He gently set the stretcher with Charon down right outside the Vault door, where the radiation was hottest. He gathered up the pistol and the packets of Rad-Away—he didn't need it, but Samantha might—then sat himself down on one of the suitcases, waiting.

He sat there with his chin in his hands, his eyes on Charon, as the sun climbed higher in the sky and the day grew warmer around them. At first he wondered if more super-mutants might come to bother him, but none did, and after a while he stopped worrying. _Samantha must have got them all._ He thought of her, and if she had heard his fight with the super-mutant behemoth, and what she might have thought if she did; he thought of Nova, and wished vaguely that she could see him now. His mind wandered back to Megaton and its inhabitants, as he pondered how they would react to the death of Moriarty and what that would mean for Samantha and Charon and himself. He lost track of time as he sat there, thinking; he could not have said how long it was before he came back to himself to see that Charon's eyes were open, watching him.

"You're awake," he said with a start.

Charon reached to unhook the quick-release clasp on the restraints that held him to the stretcher. The straps fell away and he sat up, moving easily. The other ghoul looked down at himself, exploring his bandaged torso with his hands, then began to unwind the wrappings. As they came off, Gob saw that the inner dressings were stiff and dark with blood, yet the reddish-orange flesh beneath was completely uninjured. Charon tossed them aside. His eyes found Gob.

"Water," he rasped.

Gob immediately handed him a bottle of the purified water that Samantha had given him. Charon drank thirstily, his eyes watching Gob. When he had finished, he discarded the now-empty bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. He glanced briefly at the bulk of the dead behemoth, still lying where it had fallen at the far end of the canyon. "I…I thought it was a dream."

"What?"

"I dreamed that—" He hesitated, studying Gob. Something that looked like a frown crossed his ruined features. "There was a super-mutant behemoth. And—you—killed it."

"It wasn't a dream," Gob said quietly.

Charon's frown deepened. His eyes went from the behemoth's corpse to Gob, and back again. "You. By yourself?"

"Yes," Gob confirmed.

Charon studied him for a long moment. At last, he nodded. Something flickered in his flat, expressionless eyes.

"Well done," he said.

Gob was silent, but a burst of euphoria filled him. Charon got his feet under him and stood, a bit unsteadily; he braced himself against the wall. _If he's feeling any of the rads, _Gob mused, _he isn't showing it._

"We are at Vault 87?" At Gob's nod, Charon continued, "Where is Samantha?"

"Waiting beyond the fence." Gob pointed back toward the girder and barbed-wire construction.

"I must return to my mistress." Charon pushed away from the wall. "Do you have a weapon for me?"

Without a qualm, Gob unbelted the .44 Magnum Blackhawk that Samantha had given him and passed it to Charon. Charon checked the load of the pistol and then fastened around his waist. He was slightly unsteady on his feet, and he leaned on Gob as the two of them started their long, slow climb back toward the fence around the area. Behind them, just at the base of the screen door, lay the discarded stretcher and pile of bandages. Neither one of them looked back.

[*]

The sun had passed its zenith and started its descent by the time the two ghouls reached the border of the irradiated area. Gob felt a pang of regret as they passed out of the radiation, but with a glance at his comrade, he suppressed it; Charon's face was stone. If he felt a similar regret, he gave no sign: his entire concern was to return to the side of his mistress.

Together, with Charon still leaning heavily on Gob, the two of them made their limping way across the stony field to the cover of the treeline. The long, golden afternoon light came slanting into the desiccated remains of the forest; Samantha was in among the blackened trunks, seated on a fallen log and working on her sniper rifle in the middle of a dim shaft of sunshine. Dust motes danced and sparkled around her in the rays of the setting sun. Her back was to them. Dogmeat was curled by her side, his nose buried in his tail; his head came up at their approach, and he bounded toward them with a joyous bark.

The sniper rifle went clattering to the ground as Samantha started up from her seat. "_Charon…_" she breathed. The next moment she was clasping the taller ghoul in her arms, crushing him to her. She buried her face against him, her armored shoulders shaking. Charon flinched at the impetuosity of her embrace, then stood unresisting; he did not return it, but perhaps he did not have to, Gob thought. After a long moment, Samantha pushed Charon away, gripping him by the shoulders and looking at him.

"Charon," she said again, and smiled through her tears.

"My mistress," Charon responded quietly. He said no more, yet the depth of emotion in those two words could have filled volumes. Gob averted his eyes.

Samantha enfolded Charon in another embrace, then bestowed that radiant smile on Gob; Gob found himself fidgeting awkwardly. "You did it," she said. "You actually did it. I heard all the commotion earlier and I didn't think—but you actually _brought back Charon_—"

"He killed a super-mutant behemoth," Charon interposed in his grinding voice.

Samantha's eyes widened as she digested that information. _"Really."_ There was a new respect in her voice. "Gob, if I had known I would have—but you _did_ it. I—" Abruptly, she pulled him to her and kissed him soundly on one ruined cheek. "Thank you. I—I don't know how I can ever repay you."

"It—It wasn't so much," Gob stammered. He dropped his eyes and kicked at the ground, filled with embarrassment and a strange, singing joy. The remaining skin on his face felt hot, as if he were blushing, and the place where her lips had touched him seemed to burn.

"No. Gob, I mean it. If you ever need a favor, just ask me. I'm in your debt," Samantha said seriously.

"As am I."

Startled, Gob glanced at the taller ghoul; Charon folded his arms and raised his chin, his lantern jaw set. Gob swallowed a bit; somehow the idea of Charon owing him a favor intimidated him.

Samantha took a step back and regarded her two ghoulish companions. When she spoke, her tone was brisk and businesslike, though she couldn't quite suppress that giddy smile. "Well. Okay, the first order of business: Charon. You need clothes. Armor, too." The tall ghoul was still clad in nothing but his boxer shorts, as he had been when they had first taken him from Megaton. "Fort Bannister is _that_ way." She pointed. "How do the two of you feel about hunting some Talon Company?" Her eyes danced.

"As you command, my mistress," was Charon's calm reply.

"Talon? Shoot." Gob waved one hand. "After a behemoth, how hard can they _be?_"

Samantha's mouth twitched, and she burst into peals of laughter. Gob couldn't help it; he found himself joining her. The ancient, dead forest rang with the sounds of their mirth, as the terrible stress of the journey ebbed away into the dusty late-afternoon air.


	8. Chapter 8

It took them a couple days to get back to Megaton; Samantha set a leisurely pace to help Charon recover his strength. The tall ghoul was ravenous after his rapid healing, as Gob had expected; radiation stimulated the flesh to repair itself, but the raw materials had to come from within Charon's own body, and they needed to be replaced. The rads had given Gob a small gift as well, he noticed on the second day: studying his patchwork arms that morning, he realized that the areas of desiccated skin had grown slightly. The new skin was still hard, dry and leathery—still prone to flaking off—but the gaps of exposed muscle between the patches of remaining skin were smaller than before. It wasn't much of an improvement, but Gob was willing to take anything he could get. _Who knew that high rads would have that effect?_

Charon quickly consumed all the rations Samantha had brought with them, but fortunately, hunting was good: their small party ran across more than enough mole rats and wild dogs to keep them all supplied with food. Samantha and Charon both tried to show Gob how to shoot the .32 pistol he had hung onto; Gob acquiesced to their attempts to teach him, but privately suspected he would never become very good at it. Along the way Samantha diverted to a Mirelurk spawning ground. After they had killed all the Mirelurks, Mirelurk Hunters and Mirelurk Kings in residence and harvested the eggs, they literally had more Mirelurk Hatchling Meat than the three of them could carry. Gob couldn't eat any of it, of course, but Charon could and did.

"We found a really great recipe for Mirelurk cakes in the Anchorage War Memorial," Samantha confided to Gob. "I'd love to try it sometime, but it requires ingredients we can't easily get these days, like eggs and mayonnaise."

"The Brass Lantern sometimes has them," Gob mentioned. "Maybe you could ask Jenny Stahl what their recipe is."

"Maybe I will. It seems a shame to let all this meat go to waste. What do you think, Charon?"

The other ghoul finished the Mirelurk claw he was working on and glanced over at her. "As you think best, my mistress." Charon was sporting new Talon armor now, and carried an assault rifle at his back, both taken off a group of Talon mercs the three of them had come across near the outskirts of Fort Bannister. They hadn't gone looking for Talon, precisely, but they had taken no especial pains to avoid their headquarters, either; running into a squad of them hadn't exactly been a surprise. After she and her plasma rifle had made short work of them, Samantha had pronounced it "letting nature take its course."

"I saved your shotgun, Charon," she reassured her follower. "It's in the weapons locker back home. We can pick it up when we get back to Megaton." Then she bit her lip and looked down. "If Simms lets me in, that is."

Gob shifted in the brittle grass. The three of them were seated on a low rise under a dead tree, lunching on their provisions; now Gob swallowed a mouthful of mole-rat meat, reached over, and laid a hand on Samantha's shoulder. "You did what you had to do, Samantha," he told her quietly. "Moriarty was being a complete bastard, even for _him—_take it from me, from someone who knows. It was a life and death situation and you didn't have time to fuck around."

"Yeah…." Samantha sighed. "The question is, will _Simms_ see it that way?"

"I'll tell him for you." Gob squeezed her shoulder. "If he has any questions about it, just tell him to come and ask me."

"Thanks, Gob." Samantha smiled at him. "Oh well," she said, shrugging off her worry like a cloak. "If he _does_ kick me out, then I'll just go to Rivet City. How does that sound to you, Charon?" she asked,

"If it is what you wish, Mistress, then that is what we will do," he replied calmly. Samantha handed him another claw, then tore one in two and tossed half of it to Dogmeat before starting on the other half herself. Gob shaded his eyes and peered across the Wastes in the direction of the walls of Megaton.

They reached the settlement in the late afternoon of their second day of travel. Samantha grew solemn and quiet as soon as the high walls came into view, and only grew quieter the nearer they drew to the town. They greeted Deputy Weld at the entrance, and as the doors swung open, Samantha drew a breath. "Well," she said, setting her jaw, "here goes nothing."

"It'll be okay, Samantha," Gob told her.

"We'll see." She squared her shoulders and marched into the town as if to the gallows.

The usual traffic of Wasteland wanderers and drifters filled the narrow lanes inside the walls; Gob also recognized a few of the townsfolk out and about, even this late. Lucy West nodded to them, and Walter was out looking down at them from the landing around the Water Treatment Plant. The town seemed somehow smaller to him, the buildings more run-down than before. _Or was it always this way and I just didn't notice…?_

Ahead of him, Samantha stiffened. Gob looked down the path to see Simms approaching, his hat on his head and the silver star of his sheriff's badge shining. Charon stepped to one side of Samantha—into what Gob now recognized as a covering position—and reached back almost idly to touch the stock of his assault rifle, but Samantha herself took no action, simply standing and watching as Simms drew nearer. The sheriff came to a halt, and ran his eyes over the three of them.

"Samantha," he said at last, folding his arms.

Samantha swallowed a bit, and the color in her face deepened, but she bravely held the sheriff's eyes. "Sheriff Simms," she replied.

Simms regarded her for a long moment. "Nova told me about what happened in Moriarty's Saloon the night you left."

Samantha seemed to brace herself. "Sir, I'm sure that whatever she told you was correct," she said.

Simms tilted his head. "She told me how you begged him to let you hire Gob—that you offered him all the caps you had, saying that Charon's life was at stake. She said that when you went to him, Moriarty had been drinking and that he tried to force himself on you—that you had to shoot him in self-defense. That's what happened, isn't it."

It was not a question. He held Samantha's eyes meaningfully. Samantha studied him uncertainly for a moment, then swallowed.

"That's—Close enough, Sheriff," she replied quietly.

Simms nodded. "Then I don't think we need to say any more about this. Your house is still open for you."

Samantha closed her eyes and drew a deep, relieved breath. The tension that she had carried with her all during their return trip seemed to drain from her body, and she looked back at Simms with profound gratitude. "Thank you, Sheriff Simms."

A slight smile came into his eyes. "It's good to have you back, Samantha. The town's been too quiet while you're gone."

"It's good to _be_ back, Sheriff," Samantha replied, heartfelt. As she started off toward her house, Charon and Dogmeat in tow, Simms stopped Gob.

"Oh, Gob—there's good news for you. Apparently, Moriarty's will left the saloon to you and Nova. It's yours now."

Gob turned to look up at the high, boxy shape of the saloon, the building that had been his prison for the past fifteen years. "It's—it's mine?" he asked, bewildered.

"Well, yours and Nova's. If you want it, that is." Simms paused. "I know that you're originally from Underworld—I don't know if you had put any thought into whether you want to stay here or whether you want to go home. If you don't want the saloon, I'm sure that one of the Stahls will be happy to buy your share from you—"

"I—" Gob raised one hand to his forehead. _I own the saloon?_ The idea didn't seem to make any sense to him. "I don't know. I'll—I'll need time to think it over. It's all so fast…."

Suddenly he was exhausted. It was as if the fatigue of the last two days came crashing down on him all at once, leaving him almost too tired to stand; he reached out and put one hand on a nearby water pipe for support. Simms studied him.

"Well, you don't have to decide right now. Why don't you go home and get some sleep? You look like you're about ready to fall over."

"Thanks. I think I will." _**I**__ own the __**saloon?**_he wondered. It didn't make any more sense this time either.

[*]

Nova was there when he got back, but by the time he managed to climb up to Moriarty's, Gob was practically dead on his feet; _all_ he wanted was to crawl into his own bed and sleep for a week. Nova saw this, and sensibly refrained from asking him any questions. Instead, she sat him down at the bar, placed a bowl of squirrel stew in front him, and stood over him with folded arms until he had eaten the whole thing. It took him a while to realize that the bar was unusually empty; when he finally mentioned it to Nova, she explained that she had been keeping the place closed until he and Samantha returned. Gob was too tired to ask her anything else. After he finished the stew, he retreated upstairs, collapsed onto his rusty frame bed with the thin and lumpy mattress, and slept like the dead.

Dead tired or not, fifteen years of habit still held sway: the next morning, Gob woke with the first rays of the sun, slanting in through the gaps and pinprick holes in the outer wall of his room. The usual gut-clenching dread tightened his stomach, and it wasn't until he was frantically lacing his boots that he remembered there was no need for it: Moriarty was not waiting downstairs to belt him one the moment he came down, for being late or lazy or any one of a myriad of other items on the ever-changing list of Ways Gob Could Fuck Up that he kept in his head.

_He's dead,_ Gob reminded himself, and hesitantly began to permit himself to believe it. _That son of a bitch is actually dead._ It felt like being released from prison. The fingers of fear that clutched his heart began to loosen their grip one by one, and a weight seemed to slowly lift from his shoulders.

He stopped by Nova's room as he usually did in the morning, but her room was already empty. Nor was she in the bar below. He found her outside on the metal landing around the saloon, sitting in one of a pair of flimsy-looking plastic pre-war chairs; she was sipping something from the Vault-Tec mug that Samantha had brought her earlier and watching the sunrise. The sky was a beautiful translucent shell-pink color, streaked with bands of cream and gold; the air was cool, almost chilly. It promised to be a beautiful day.

Nova glanced up as he stepped out on the balcony and gave a slow smile. "Gob," she greeted him, and gestured to the other chair. Gob did not need to be asked twice; he took the seat, stretching his legs out in front of him.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Like a rock," he replied. "I guess it all just caught up with me at once."

"You probably needed it," Nova replied, smiling again. There was a bit of silence as she took another sip from her mug.

"Tea?" Gob asked.

"Just purified water. Oh, I didn't get a chance to mention it last night, but did you hear that Moriarty left us the bar?"

"Yeah, Simms told me when I got back to town." Gob replied. "He also told us what—what you told him about Moriarty," he said, looking at her carefully.

"And?" Nova regarded him, her face inscrutable.

"That was a nice thing you did for Samantha," he said quietly.

Nova shrugged. "What I told Simms was basically what happened. I might have placed more emphasis on some parts of it than others, but it was true: Moriarty was trying to force himself on her and Samantha was defending herself. Just because he didn't take it physical doesn't change what happened—trust a girl like me to know." Nova gave a tight smile. Gob bit his lip.

"Did—did he—"

"Not with me," she replied. "I don't think he quite dared. But I heard rumors that he did with Silver a couple of times, and to be honest, I wouldn't put it past him." Gob nodded slowly. He'd heard the same stories. There was silence for a bit, while around them, the dawn crept into the day.

"What are you going to do with your share, do you know yet?" he asked Nova, changing the subject. Suddenly it occurred to him that Nova might have decided to sell her share and go back to wherever she was from, and his heart sank at the thought.

"I dunno. I'll probably retire," she said, shrugging. "There's only so long a girl can keep going, in my line of work, after all."

"Oh." Gob bit his lip. "Will—will you go away?"

"I don't really have anywhere to go back to," Nova replied calmly, taking another swallow from her cup. "So, probably not. You?" she asked, turning her eyes on him. "You could go back to Underworld, after all."

"I don't know. I don't think so. It—one thing traveling with Samantha showed me is just how dangerous it is out there. I'm not cut out for it," he confessed in resignation. "On my own, I really don't think I could make it."

Nova simply nodded. "Oh, I just remembered," she said suddenly. "We've still got all the caps Samantha brought with her. To hire you from Moriarty?" she said. "I locked the bag up in Colin's safe after you two left, so that none of the drifters could get to them. It's still all there."

"I don't want it," Gob said with a shudder. "Give it back to her. Keeping any of it would feel like keeping blood money. Besides, Colin had no right to it in the first place."

"That's what I thought as well."

There was a bit more silence. Around them, the sounds of the town beginning to stir filled the air. Gob turned his patchwork arms over in the sunlight, examining the new areas of skin again; he almost thought to ask Nova if she'd noticed, then bit it back. _A couple more square inches of rotting skin on your arms and legs isn't going to change anything._

"What was it like?" Nova asked him quietly.

Gob looked over at her. "What?"

She tilted her head. "Your journey with Samantha. It's been a long time since I was outside Megaton's walls. What was it like out there?"

"You—you want to hear it?" he asked her.

She smiled slightly. "If you feel like telling it. Yes, I do."

So Gob told her about it, as the morning light strengthened and the sky above Megaton grew paler. He told her about the Raiders; the Hunters of Men; the Enclave and Doctor Corday; about meeting the ghouls in the Waste Disposal Company; he told her about taking Charon into the area around Vault 87, and his encounter with the behemoth there. He was slightly embarrassed to tell her his experiences: he felt somehow that she wouldn't believe him, or that she would laugh and think he was trying to impress her, but she listened with interest, expressing surprise and fear in the right places, and asking detailed questions about what he had done and why. He could see she was as repulsed as he was by the Hunters of Men, and when he spoke of the Enclave, her face grew long and serious.

"You were very lucky," she told him. "I've heard from the caravaners how the Enclave treats ghouls. It could have been really bad."

"I know," Gob said, heartfelt. He went on to tell her about his experience with the behemoth, and saw a new respect enter her eyes as he described how he had gotten past it.

"Those things can easily overwhelm even large groups of people," she said. "Getting past it all by yourself as you did was quite an accomplishment."

"it's one I can live a long time without repeating," he said fervently. "Besides, most of it was luck. And the high rads—I knew that whatever that thing did to me short of cutting off my head, I'd almost certainly heal from it immediately." He frowned. "It's strange—I thought I wanted an adventure, hell, that's why I set out from Underworld in the first place, but….If that's an adventure, I don't think I want any more adventures for a while," he concluded at last.

Nova nodded and favored him with a smile. "I don't want you to go on any more adventures for a while either," she told him.

Gob shifted awkwardly in his chair. Again, there was a moment of silence.

"I missed you while you were gone," she said quietly.

He bit his lip and looked down, unsure of what to say. There was something in the focused, concentrated way Nova was looking at him that made it hard to meet her eyes.

"I've been thinking," she began.

Gob stared at the rusted metal plates of the rickety landing. He clenched his hands on the arms of the chair.

"About what you said a while back," Nova continued. "About being willing to wait for me. And, well…."

He said nothing; he was afraid to speak. His hands were so tight on the arms of the chair that he could feel his pulse in his knuckles. The remains of his skin were tingling. Beside him, he heard Nova sigh.

"You know," her words came to him, "appearance isn't everything. Looks don't last forever. Mine certainly aren't going to. When it comes to what makes a relationship work, other things are more important. Things like kindness…caring…respect…And when you look at it that way—"

Gob didn't dare move. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"A girl would have to be crazy to let a guy like you go."

She reached out and put her hand over his own. Now his eyes jerked toward her. "What—" He could barely breathe. "Wh—What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, if you still want to, I'm willing to give it a try. If you still want me, you've got me, Gob. But first I have to tell you that—"

"You—You mean it?" Gob stammered. "You mean you—you really want to be with me?"

"If you still want to," she said, nodding. "But I need to warn you that I—"

"No. No. It doesn't matter," he burst out. He seized her hand in both of his, gripping so hard he could almost feel the bones in her fingers. His heart was leaping in his chest. "There's nothing you could possibly say that could make a difference. I—God, Nova, I—I'll want you no matter what. Forever, if that's what you want. Is—_is_ that what you want?" he ventured.

Nova studied him. "It is," she affirmed. "Forever."

A rush of euphoria filled Gob. He felt as if he were floating. He felt as if none of this could be real, as if he'd somehow stumbled into an alternate universe where all his dreams had come true. Then a thought occurred to him, one that made him swallow. "But—but Nova, you know that—" He drew an unsteady breath. "You know that ghouls can't have children," he finished in a rush. "If you—"

Nova's mouth twisted into an edged smile. "Funny you should mention that," she said, and rested one hand on her stomach.

Gob's heart stopped. Time seemed to pause around him, as clear and fragile as crystal. He could see dust motes drifting in beams of light, the morning sun glittering off a fresh scrape in the rail; flakes of rust peeling off the wall of Moriarty's saloon. Nova was luminous and pale in the bright sunshine.

"You're—you're _pregnant?_" he whispered at last.

She closed her eyes, looking suddenly older, and nodded. "That's what I was trying to tell you," she said in a low voice. "Doc Church just confirmed it yesterday. And I need to tell you right now," she said, opening her eyes and looking directly at him. "I am keeping this baby. If you don't want to deal with raising a kid, then I will understand. I would never try to force you to stay. But I _will not_ give up my child."

Gob was shaking his head even before she had finished speaking. His heart felt full to bursting. "Nova, this doesn't change anything. I—My God, I—" His eyes were stinging, and he dashed at them with the back of his hand. "I never thought I'd actually have a chance to be a father." His arms ached to embrace her, but he didn't quite dare; he settled for squeezing her hand.

Nova regarded him with patent skepticism. "You're _sure?_ Even though you'd be helping to raise another man's kid?" she asked bluntly.

"That's not the way it works among ghouls. As far as I'm concerned, any child of yours is my child too. I mean that," he said, and squeezed her hand again.

Nova studied him for a moment more; he could tell she was still somewhat dubious. _It's almost as if she's thinking, "We'll see."_ Gob silently vowed to prove to her that he had meant what he said. "Thank you, Gob," she said at last. Then her face darkened. "It's a damn good thing Samantha shot Moriarty when she did. He would _not_ have wanted me to keep this baby."

"He couldn't stop you—"

"He could fire me, and then I'd _really_ be in trouble." Her jaw set and she stared grimly out over the rail. Gob shifted uneasily, and stroked her hand.

"Well, he's gone," he offered. "Let's forget about him, okay? I know _I'm _trying to," he added, feeling his own jaw tighten. After a long, frozen moment, the stony expression drained from Nova's face, and she put her hand over his with a small smile. Again, there was silence for a time.

At length, Gob drew a breath. "Nova, there's one thing I need to ask you," he began. "What—what the answer is won't change anything," he rushed to reassure her as she turned to look at him. "I give you my word. But just for myself, I need to know—" He paused, gathering his courage, then met her eyes squarely. "Is the only reason you changed your mind because of the baby?"

Nova lowered her eyes for a moment, obviously considering the question, then ran one hand through her hair. "I'm not going to lie to you, Gob," she told him. "The baby _is_ a big part of it. But it might not be for the reasons you think."

Gob shifted in his chair. "Go on."

"When I first realized I might be pregnant, everything seemed to change overnight. My priorities got reordered in a big hurry. I began to realize that a lot of things I had thought were important really weren't, at all. I—" She sighed. "I don't know if I can explain it well. It's almost as if my life were struck by one of the pre-war bombs—everything got blown up in the air and all the pieces got tangled together somehow. I'm still not done sorting everything out," she confessed with a shrug. "But one thing it made me realize…."

She trailed off, and turned frankly to face him. "You know, ever since the talk we had, the promise I gave you kept coming back to me? It just kept drifting through my mind at odd moments during the day. Almost like—" She paused, groping for words. "It's almost like a door was nudged open in my mind that had been closed before. Well, the bomb blew that door right off its hinges. And one of the things that it made me realize—" She stopped here and gave him a slow, gentle smile. "I can't imagine raising a child with anyone but you."

Gob was silent. He felt his eyes stinging again, and did his best to blink back the tears.

"That's what I've got, Gob," Nova continued. "If that's not enough for you—"

"_No,_" he said hoarsely. "No, no, _no_. It's _more_ than enough. More than I had hoped. And, Nova—" He paused, swallowing hard.

She looked at him. "Yes?"

He fumbled, searching for the right words. "What I said earlier—If you—" He drew a breath, his chest tight with emotion. "If you ever decide you want more kids," he rushed out. "What I said earlier, I meant. Any child of yours, I'll—I'll raise as my own, and I won't ask any questions. I mean it."

Nova regarded him expressionlessly for a long moment. Gob bit his lip; he couldn't tell if she were amused or offended. "Well, we'll talk about that if it happens," she said levelly, then smiled again. "It's entirely possible that one may be enough."

A transcendent happiness filled him. So many wonderful, impossible things were all happening so fast, he could scarcely believe it: he was free, Moriarty was gone forever, Nova had said she wanted him, and—most unbelievable of all—he was actually going to be a father. His mind could scarcely take it all in. He wondered for a moment if he had died out there after all—if the behemoth had actually gotten him, and this was heaven.

"Let's get married," Gob said suddenly, turning toward her. "Right now."

Nova pulled her hand away and turned that same skeptical gaze on him. "Gob," she said patiently, "I didn't say anything about getting married. To be honest, I don't expect it."

"You—you don't want to marry me?"

"I'm willing to marry you, Gob," Nova said, "but come on." She raised one brow. "Are you sure you want a _whore_ for your _wife?_"

"No, I don't. I want _you._ Before—well, before you change your mind about being with me," he mumbled.

Nova tilted her head. The arch to her brow deepened. "How, Gob? Who is there even to marry us now?"

"Confessor Cromwell," Gob replied, gesturing down to the center of the town. Already the rising, falling intonations of the head of the Church of the Atom could be heard in the clear morning air. "I bet he could, if we asked him. We could have Samantha and Sheriff Simms to witness. Please, Nova?"

Nova studied him for a long moment. Gob watched, hanging on every flickering change in her face, hardly daring to hope. At last, she sighed.

"If it's that important to you, Gob—and if you're _sure_ you don't mind—then all right. I'll marry you."

[*]

So they stood before Confessor Cromwell to be married.

The words he read hadn't changed much in two hundred years. Sheriff Simms, caught as he started out of his house to embark on his daily rounds, stood for Gob, and Samantha was at Nova's shoulder, with Charon behind _her_ and Dogmeat sitting at her side. Samantha was beaming throughout the ceremony; Charon's flat expression gave no sign, but there was a strange flicker in his eyes as Gob took his place beside Nova. Apart from those three (or four), the only other person in the dim and dusty interior of the Church of Atom that morning was Harden, Sheriff Simms's son, who folded his arms on the back of a pew and watched, entranced. It was the first wedding that had been performed in town in years. Gob momentarily panicked when he realized he had no ring, but Samantha was able to produce one that she had scrounged from somewhere, and Simms quickly dashed to Moira's shop and brought back another. Gob felt as light and buoyant as a feather, as if his feet were barely touching the ground; it was even better than the high rads of Vault 87. He kept stealing glances at Nova throughout the short ceremony. There was no such wild happiness on her face; she seemed calm, perhaps a little tired. It was all right though. Gob promised himself that he would love her enough for both of them.

At last it was done. The walk back was a silent one; Gob was so full of emotion that he felt he would burst, but his clumsy tongue somehow couldn't find the words to express it, so he said nothing. Inside the cool darkness of the saloon, Gob went to his usual place behind the bar, preparing to start the day, only to see Nova locking the door behind them.

"What are you doing?"

She turned to regard him. "It's our wedding day," she said calmly. "I think we can close the bar for this one day, don't you?"

"But what are we—" Then Gob fell silent as a slow, arch smile curled Nova's mouth. Her eyes were watchful and grave.

"What do you think?"

Gob's heart skipped a beat. _She can't—she doesn't—_ "N-Nova, you," he fumbled. "You d-don't have to—I-I mean, if you can't, I'll understand—"

Nova gave him a look, then headed for the stairs. She halted with one foot on the bottom step, and looked back over her shoulder at him. "Well, you'd _better_ come on," she said. "A gentleman doesn't keep a lady waiting, after all."

Helplessly, Gob followed her. He was trembling, and his heart was pounding in his chest. He'd wanted this for so long…. _She can't mean it,_ he repeated to himself as he climbed the stairs after her. _Not with a ghoul. She's going to change her mind, she doesn't really know—_

Inside the room that Nova had shared with her clients, Gob tried again. "Nova, you—I mean it. You don't have to do this. I know that I—"

Nova laid a finger against his lips. "Shhh," she whispered, and pulled him to her.

Gob was not blind, and he was not stupid. During what followed, Nova did not try to pretend that she was wildly attracted to him, and for that, he was somehow grateful; there was no way he would not have seen through such a pretense, and It would have hurt worse than if she had called him repulsive to his face. Instead, she simply focused on showing him how to please her, and on giving him pleasure in return. He could tell that she was doing it at least partly to prove to herself that she could, but after a while it ceased to matter. When it was over and they lay in each other's arms, he murmured, heartfelt, "Thank you, Nova. For—all of it."

He felt Nova's fingertips brush his peeling forehead. "Think nothing of it."

"No. I mean it. I...I know I'm--not much," he confessed. "And that was the—well, I-I hadn't ever," he stammered.

"I know. It's okay." He felt her chuckle a bit. "Would you believe that that was one of the best experiences I've had?"

Gob shifted a bit and turned his face away. "Please don't do that, Nova," he said quietly.

"Don't do what?"

He swallowed. "Don't."

The springs creaked as Nova stirred against him, and she touched his forehead again. "Well, it's sort of true. Okay, you needed me to show you what to do, but you know what, Gob?" She pushed away from him a little and looked him straight in the eyes. "You were with _me_. When you touched me, you were touching _me,_ not just using me as a stand-in for whatever you had going on in your head at the moment. I could—" She reached out and stroked his face. Her expression softened. "I could feel how much you cared in the way you touched me. And trust me when I say that's not something I've experienced that often, to say the least."

She might have just been feeding him words to soothe him and make him feel better, but right then, Gob decided he didn't care. He was going to believe her. His arms tightened around her as if he feared she would slip away from him somehow. His gray, flaking, patchy skin looked unreal next to her smooth white perfection. There was silence for a while as the two of them lay next to each other. At last, he gave a small laugh.

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that if this whole thing were a story, no one would ever believe it. I barely believe it myself," he confessed. "Me—Gob. Facing down Raiders and Hunters, the Enclave, a super-mutant behemoth—and now this." He looked at her, still not quite able to believe she was there. "It's like something out of a dream—a fairy tale, maybe."

Nova chuckled again. "You mean like the ones Billy Creel tells Maggie?"

"Something like that," he said, shaking his head. "What would they call it, anyway?" he continued. "Beauty and the Beast? The Ghoul Gets the Girl?"

"I don't know what they'd call it," Nova murmured, "but I know how it ends."

"Ends?" Gob swallowed a sudden chill. "Wh-what do you mean, ends?"

Nova stroked his shoulder reassuringly. "The ending. Don't you know how all fairy tales end?" She looked at him and smiled.

_And they lived happily ever after._


End file.
